NASA has accomplished a new technological feat — broadcasting cat videos from deep space.
The short video was loaded on the Psyche probe in October, and it was beamed from the probe on Dec. 11. The probe is on a trajectory to travel the “main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter” while sending out “high-data-rate signals” to test sending high-quality transmissions and communications through space.
“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), per NASA’s release.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
“But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission,” he added.
The video was transmitted through space at a record speed of 101 seconds. The clip was sent through aflight laser transceiver, which beamed the information to Earth with an infrared laser at “267 megabits per second.” The Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, downloaded the video from the probe in space and sent it to play live at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA employees watching the first ultra-HD streaming video beamed from deep space. The video stars an orange cat named Taters.NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections,” said Ryan Rogalin, the project’s receiver electronics lead at JPL. “In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space.”
He also noted that Taters was a hit among researchers: “JPL’sDesignLabdid an amazing job helping us showcase this technology — everyone loves Taters.”
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The NASA team said they hope this communication technology “paves the way” for “higher-data-rate communications” that can someday be used in a missionsending humans to Mars.
“Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals, and we look forward to the continued advancement of this technology and the transformation of how we communicate during future interplanetary missions,” said NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy.
source: people.com
