NASA finally did it. The national space organization responsible for sending the first man to the moon has finally sent the first cat video from deep space using lasers.
The ultra-high-definition 15-second video sent 19 million miles away from Earth features a clip of a cat named Taters playing with a laser pointer.
Taters is a pet cat by one of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory employees leading the research. Taters himself was unharmed throughout the whole experiment.
The video stream was part of an experiment for Deep Space Optical Communications, NASA's recent study to successfully accomplish long-distance communications in outer space.
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How Was NASA Able to Send the Cat Video from Space
The laser communication demo was made successful thanks to the Psyche spacecraft launched last Oct. 13.
The spacecraft, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, is equipped with a flight laser transceiver capable of sending and receiving 267Mbps of data.
Tater's video itself only took 101 seconds to reach Earth where it was received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California.
To demonstrate Palomar's technical capabilities, Tater's video was transmitted along with the info for the cat's heart rate, color, and breed displayed.
NASA expects DSOC to quickly transmit data at an interplanetary level and push the limits of space exploration in the solar system.
Why Did NASA Choose Tater the Cat?
Surprisingly, there is an actual reason why the project chose to feature Tater in its first laser transmission from space.
According to JPL, the video was inspired by the small statue of the popular cartoon character Felix the Cat being featured in test broadcast transmissions back in the 1920s and 30s.
While the tradition has clearly been lost to time, JPL wants to honor this little treat because "cat videos and memes are some of the most popular content online."
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