NASA sends cat video from deep space

NASA announced Monday that it used an advanced laser communications system on a spacecraft 31 million miles from Earth to send high-definition cat video.

The 15-second meow video featuring an orange tabby cat named Taters is the first to be broadcast from deep space and demonstrates that it is possible to transmit the higher data rate communications needed to support missions complex projects such as sending humans to Mars.

The video was transmitted to Earth using a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is heading to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to explore a mysterious metal-rich object. When he sent the video, the spacecraft was 80 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

The near-infrared encoded signal was received by the Hale telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County and then sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video over millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we generally send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, technology demonstration project manager at JPL.

“But to make this important event more memorable, we decided to work with JPL designers to create a fun video that captures the essence of the Psyche mission demo.”

Space missions traditionally rely on radio waves to send and receive data, but the use of lasers can increase data throughput by 10 to 100 times.

Giant leap for cats

The ultra-HD video took 101 seconds to be sent to Earth at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second, faster than most home broadband connections.

“Actually, after we received the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL via the Internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space,” said Ryan Rogalin, receiver electronics manager. of the project at JPL.

So why a cat video? First, there is the historical connection, JPL said. When American interest in television began to grow in the 1920s, a statue of Felix the Cat was broadcast to serve as a test image.

And while cats don’t lay claim to the title of man’s best friend, few can dispute their number one position when it comes to internet videos and meme culture.

Posted online ahead of launch, the clip shows a JPL employee’s pet Tabby chasing a laser light across a couch, with test graphics overlaid. These include Psyche’s orbital trajectory and technical information about the laser and its data bit rate.

While laser transmission has been demonstrated in low Earth orbit and as far away as the Moon, the Psyche mission is the first time it has been deployed in deep space. Aiming a laser beam millions of miles away requires extremely precise “pointing,” a major technical hurdle that engineering teams had to resolve.

The technology demonstration must even compensate for the fact that during the time it takes for light to travel from the spacecraft to Earth, the probe and the planet will have moved. The uplink and downlink lasers must therefore adapt to the change accordingly.

© 2023 AFP