AceNewsDesk – The owner of an orange tabby cat called Taters is “celebrating his spotlight with him, but making sure he keeps his paws on the carpet”, after the feline starred in the first video transmitted to Earth by laser from deep space.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.22: 2023: NASA News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

The 15-second video — beamed to Earth from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft 31 million kilometres away (that’s about 80 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon) — showed three-year-old Taters chasing a red laser beam on a couch.

Some graphics were overlaid onto the video, including Taters’s heart rate, colour and breed, as well as the spacecraft’s orbital path and technical information about its laser.

Taters’s owner, Joby Harris, an art director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told the Associated Press that he couldn’t be prouder, but didn’t want his cat’s new-found celebrity to go to its head.

“My cat Taters appeared in the first HD video ever beamed to Earth from outer space!” Mr Harris wrote on Instagram.

“This opens the door to next level comms streaming HD video from spacecraft and astronauts in the future.”

Taters’s Instagram biography now describes him as a “Laser Beam Motion Analyst”.

Video sent faster than most internet connections on Earth

The video of Taters was sent to Earth using something called a flight laser transceiver, which can send and receive near-infrared laser beams.

The clip had been loaded into the Psyche spacecraft before it was sent into space in October.

The ultra high-definition video was sent at the system’s maximum rate of 267 megabits per second (Mbps). For context, most NBN connections for homes in Australia are between 20Mbps and 100Mbps.

It took the video less than two minutes to reach the Hale Telescope at The California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory on December 11, NASA said.

“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.

“Everyone loves Taters,” he added.NASA says its team managed to receive the video in less than two minutes when it was sent by laser.(Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The historic link to a classic cat video

Aside from just being cute, there’s a historical link to NASA’s decision to allow Taters to star in their test video.

In 1928 when television was still in its experimental stages, engineers in the US used a small statue of the cartoon character Felix the Cat as a test pattern, which remained on screen for hours.

Of course, cat videos would later become extremely popular online.

NASA says its laser demonstration is meant to transmit data at rates up to 100 times faster than radio systems which are currently used by spacecraft far from Earth.

The administration hopes the technology will help it improve communications from deep space, especially as it prepares to return astronauts to the Moon — and eventually get them to Mars.

NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said improving communications was “a key element to meeting our future data transmission needs”.

“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,” she said.

More test transmissions are planned as Psyche heads toward the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But Taters won’t be making anymore appearances, according to JPL.

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