While the field of space exploration requires great scientific knowledge, it also requires a certain level of creativity. Popular since the creation of the Internet, videos featuring cats frequently go viral. NASA is in turn launching a trial to transfer data from very distant sources.
A video broadcast from deep space
In order to verify the operability of a new laser communication system, the American agency transmitted a streaming video from space. And although it involved a cat in its experiment, NASA will not attract the wrath of animal protection associations. For his space trip, Taters, the cat of an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), did not move from his master’s living room: in the fifteen-second video, he is comfortably curled up on his sofa and try to catch the light point of a laser.
This video, streamed in Ultra HD quality, reached the premises of the Palomar Observatory located in California in precisely 101 seconds. The flow emanated from the Psyche probe, located 30 million kilometers from our planet.
This NASA test is considered conclusive, the video transmission rate having been measured at 267 Mbits/s, which corresponds to 33.38 MB/s. Furthermore, the Palomar observatory retransmitted the video stream obtained towards the premises of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The teams noted that the throughput of this connection was lower than that coming from space.
Historically, this is not the first time that a video has been sent from space. However, all previous transfers were made from a much closer point. This success opens the way to the preparation of certain manned missions: the evolution of technologies requires a constantly increasing volume of data. Choosing a laser-based communications system will allow data to be sent in greater quantities and more quickly than with a radio communications device.