Cats already rule the internet. Now it’s time to conquer space.
A cutting-edge NASA communications experiment used a laser to beam a video to Earth from the Psyche spacecraft when it was nearly 19 million miles away. The star of that video? A cat, of course. An orange kitty named Taters chases a red laser pointer around, a fitting exercise considering the laser technology at the heart of the demonstration.
Taters ticks all the boxes for a good cat video. The feline is fluffy, adorable and playful. But Taters also represents a big step forward for space communications. The ultra-high definition video made its journey on December 11 and traveled 80 times the distance between Earth and the moon. This shows the technology could help human astronauts stay in touch during future missions as far away as Mars.
The Deep Space Optical Communications experiment is part of the Psyche mission. The spacecraft launched in October and is heading to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to study a metal-rich asteroid named 16 Psyche. The spacecraft’s long journey is the perfect opportunity to test out the new communications system.
The cat video lasts for 15 seconds. The overlaid graphics show Psyche’s orbital path, information about Taters, technical data about the laser and the words “This is a test.” The instrument that sent it is called a flight laser transceiver. The video took 101 seconds to zoom back to Earth where it was picked up by the Hale Telescope in California, downloaded and then sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to play in real time.
NASA first tried out the DSOC in November by beaming test data across nearly 10 million miles of space. The more complex cat video experiment was also a success. Taters’ likeness actually traveled through space faster than most broadband connections we use on Earth.
NASA is hard at work on sending humans back to the moon through the Artemis program, but that’s just a stepping stone for more ambitious deep space explorations. The agency would like to land humans on Mars. The closest Mars gets to Earth is around 34 million miles. NASA JPL said the DSOC laser system “is designed to transmit data from deep space at rates 10 to 100 times greater than the state-of-the-art radio frequency systems used by deep space missions today.” That means astronauts could get their fix of fresh cat videos no matter where they roam.
Taters belongs to a JPL employee. “Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said project manager Bill Klipstein of JPL. “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.”
Taters now joins a short list of notable space cats, both real and fictional. A cat named Felicette traveled to space in the 1960s and survived the return trip. The android Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation had an orange tabby named Spot. Ellen Ripley of Alien fame lived with a cat named Jones. It’s worth noting that three out of four of these cosmic kitties are gingers.
The NASA laser communications test is serious work, but Taters’ antics also make it delightful. As DSOC team member Ryan Rogalin said, “Everyone loves Taters.”
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