NASA streams cat video from 31 million km away in deep space at internet-breaking speed

The 15-second test video featured an orange tabby cat named Taters. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications experiment has successfully beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video from a staggering 31 million km away. This feat, achieved on December 11, is a pivotal moment for NASA's pursuit of advancing optical communications for future human missions beyond Earth orbit.

NASA's laser communications demonstration, launched with the Psyche mission on October 13, showcased its capability to transmit data from deep space at rates 10 to 100 times greater than current radio frequency systems.

The 15-second test video, featuring an orange tabby cat named Taters, was sent via a flight laser transceiver, taking only 101 seconds to reach Earth at a maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second.

The instrument beamed an encoded near-infrared laser to the Hale Telescope at California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego, California, where it was downloaded. Each frame from the looping video was then sent “live” to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the video was played in real time.

The achievement comes after a series of milestones, including achieving "first light" on November 14. The system demonstrated faster data downlink speeds, increased pointing accuracy, and downlink bit rates comparable to broadband internet download speeds.

The team successfully downloaded 1.3 terabits of data on December 4, surpassing the data downlink achievements of past missions.

As NASA's Psyche mission travels to the main asteroid belt, the laser communications demo will continue to transmit high-data-rate signals, laying the groundwork for future human missions to Mars.

Ken Andrews, project flight operations lead at JPL, highlighted the learning curve: “This is a new technology, and we are experimenting with how it works. But now, with the help of our Psyche colleagues, we are getting used to working with the system and can lock onto the spacecraft and ground terminals for longer than we could previously.”