The ultra-HD video took 101 seconds to ship to Earth.
Washington:
NASA on Monday introduced it had used a state-of-the-art laser communication system on a spaceship 19 million miles (31 million kilometres) away from Earth — to ship a high-definition cat video.
The 15-second meow-vie that includes an orange tabby named Taters is the primary to be streamed from deep area and demonstrates it is doable to transmit the higher-data-rate communications wanted to assist advanced missions reminiscent of sending people to Mars.
The video was beamed to Earth utilizing a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is journeying to the primary asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to discover a mysterious metal-rich object. When it despatched the video, the spaceship was 80 occasions the space between the Earth and the Moon.
We simply streamed the primary ultra-HD video delivered to you through laser from deep area. And it is a video of Taters, a tabby cat.
This check will pave the best way for high-data-rate communications in assist of the following large leap: sending people to Mars. https://t.co/tf2hWxaHWOpic.twitter.com/c1FwybYsxA
— NASA (@NASA) December 19, 2023
The encoded near-infrared sign was acquired by the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, and from there despatched to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
“One of many objectives is to display the flexibility to transmit broadband video throughout hundreds of thousands of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video knowledge, so we normally ship packets of randomly generated check knowledge,” stated Invoice Klipstein, the tech demo’s challenge supervisor at JPL.
“However to make this vital occasion extra memorable, we determined to work with designers at JPL to create a enjoyable video, which captures the essence of the demo as a part of the Psyche mission.”
Area missions have historically relied on radio waves to ship and obtain knowledge, however working with lasers can improve the information fee by 10 to 100 occasions.
– Large pounce for catkind –
The ultra-HD video took 101 seconds to ship to Earth on the system’s most bit fee of 267 megabits per second — sooner than most house broadband connections.
“In reality, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was despatched to JPL over the web, and that connection was slower than the sign coming from deep area,” stated Ryan Rogalin, the challenge’s receiver electronics lead at JPL.
So why a cat video? First, there’s the historic connection, stated JPL. When American curiosity in tv started rising within the Nineteen Twenties, a statue of Felix the Cat was broadcast to function a check picture.
And whereas cats could not declare the title of man’s finest pal, few can dispute their number-one place in relation to web movies and meme tradition.
Uploaded earlier than launch, the clip reveals Tabby, the pet of a JPL worker, chasing a laser mild on a sofa, with check graphics overlayed. These embrace Psyche’s orbital path and technical details about the laser and its knowledge bit fee.
Whereas laser transmission has been demonstrated in low Earth orbit and as distant because the Moon, the Psyche mission is the primary time it has been deployed in deep area. Aiming a laser beam from hundreds of thousands of miles away requires extraordinarily exact “pointing,” a significant technical hurdle engineering groups needed to clear up.
The know-how demonstration even must compensate for the truth that within the time it takes for mild to journey from the spacecraft to Earth, each the probe and the planet could have moved — so the uplink and downlink lasers want to regulate for the change accordingly.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
