Employees of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted an experiment in streaming video from deep space. In the test clip, a ginger cat named Taiters chases a red dot from a laser pointer. The video was posted on the laboratory's official website.
According to information, the video featuring the cat was transmitted by the Psyche spacecraft from deep space and then returned to Earth from a distance of 31 million kilometers, which is 80 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.
As reported in the publication, the goal of the experimental complex is to test technologies for transmitting large volumes of scientific information and video materials from Mars. “To make this event even more memorable, we decided with the JPL designers to create a fun video,” noted project leader Bill Klipstein.
In the clip, a ginger cat named Taiters, belonging to one of the laboratory staff, chases a laser pointer's dot for 15 seconds. The cat rapidly changes position, while the overlaid graphics show the orbital path of the Psyche spacecraft, the Hale Telescope dome, and other technical information. The cat's heartbeat readings and data about its color and breed are also displayed.
According to the information, the video signal took 101 seconds to reach Earth. After that, it was received by the Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California and then transmitted over a broadband network to JPL at a speed of 267 megabits per second, where it was viewed in real-time. NASA called this event a historic milestone.
