NASA: Laser transmitted video of cat taters from 30 million kilometers away – Newsbomb – News

In the laser contact experiment NASA Send a video to Earth from a distance of approx 31 million kilometers.

to The first time NASA broadcasts video from deep space Use Laser.

In crystal clear video, a cheerful orange cat Taters chase the red dot of a laser pointer, ertnews.gr reported

Video of the cat was transmitted to Earth by an aviation laser transceiver as part of the experiment Optical communications in deep space (DSOC). This technology could one day be used to quickly transfer data, images and video as humans push the boundaries of space exploration, trying to reach distant planets like Mars.

Their video 15 seconds They are encoded into a near-infrared laser and transmitted by the spacecraft spirit At the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. The video was uploaded to the observatory on December 11, and each frame was broadcast live to NASA’s Gas Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. At the time of transmission, the distance between the Psyche spacecraft and Hale was 80 times larger Of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. They were just needed 101 seconds Until the laser reaches the ground. In the video we see Psyche’s orbit, the dome of the Palomar telescope, and technical information about the laser and data rate. The cat’s heart rate, color and breed are also displayed.

According to NASA, the video was inspired by a 1928 TV test show featuring the popular cartoon character Felix the cat.

Lasers can transmit data 10 to 100 times Faster than traditional radio wave systems used by NASA on other missions. The DSOC team recently downloaded it 1.3 TB of data In one night – compared to the 1.2 terabytes that NASA’s Magellan mission sent over four years to Venus in the 1990s.

the Self task I set off in mid-October to get closer to it and study it Asteroid 16 Psyche. The spacecraft will spend the next six years traveling roughly 3.6 billion kilometers To reach the planet of the same name, which is located in the outer part of the main asteroid belt.