Tabby cat named Taters steals the show in first video sent by laser from deep space
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida), Dec 21: An orange tabby cat named Taters stars in the first video transmitted by laser from deep space, stealing the show as he chases a red laser light.
The 15-second video was beamed to Earth from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which is currently 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) away from earth. It took less than two minutes for the ultra high-definition video to reach Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, sent at the test system’s maximum rate of 267 megabits per second, sources in the know of things said. The video was loaded into Psyche’s laser communication experiment before the spacecraft blasted off to a rare metal asteroid in October. The mission team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, decided to feature an employee’s 3-year-old playful kitty. The video was streamed to Earth on December 11 and released by NASA this week. Despite the vast distance, the test relayed the video faster than most broadband internet connections here on Earth, said the project’s Ryan Rogalin.
NASA wants to improve communications from deep space, especially as astronauts gear up to return to the moon with an eye toward Mars. The US will land an international astronaut on the Moon aboard NASA’s Artemis mission by the end of the decade, said Vice President Kamala Harris during a meeting of the White House’s National Space Council in Washington, DC.
The laser demonstration is meant to transmit data at rates up to 100 times greater than the radio systems currently used by spacecraft far from Earth.
More test transmissions are planned by the scientists as Psyche heads toward the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
But Taters won’t be making anymore appearances, according to JPL.
Joby Harris, an art director in JPL’s DesignLab, couldn’t be prouder, but doesn’t want his cat’s newfound celebrity to go to his head.
“I’m celebrating his spotlight with him, but making sure he keeps his paws on the carpet,” Harris said in an e-mail on Tuesday. (AP)
