Tabby cat 'Taters' appears to be having the time of his life chasing a laser around in a video from deep space, released by NASA Monday. The video, filmed by a NASA employee who owns the cat, was sent into space with NASA’s October 13 mission, Psych.Unbeknownst to the cute cat, his image is streamed from 31 million kilometres away — pioneering aerospace technology. In the video, Taters pounces on and off a chair in pursuit of a laser beam pointer. It may be one small step for cat — but NASA claims it’s one step closer to putting a man (or woman) on Mars. “We just streamed the first ultra-HD video brought to you via laser from deep space,” NASA wrote in the caption of the video on Twitter. “This test will pave the way for high-data-rate communications in support of the next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.”The video of Taters playing was accessible through NASA’s first-ever Deep Space Optical Communications experiment, which “beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video from a record-setting 31 million kilometers away,” NASA wrote on its website. That is roughly 80 times the distance to the moon from Earth NASA experts believe the successful milestone means the company can stream extremely high bandwidth video and other data from deep space, which “enables future human missions beyond Earth orbit.”.NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said “this accomplishment underscores our commitment to advancing optical communications as 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,” Melroy said. The cat video was sent using a “cutting-edge instrument called a flight laser transceiver,” NASA said on its website. It reached Earth in 101 seconds at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second. Project manager for the new technology Bill Klipstein said the video demonstrated the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles — a huge step forward, because prior to the new development, scientists would “usually send packets of randomly generated test data.”“But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers to create a fun video.”
