NASA finally broadcasts cat video from deep space

Taters the cat became an interplanetary superstar after NASA broadcast a video of him playing with a laser pointer from their Psyche asteroid probe. The 15-second, 4K clip was used as a ‘test packet’ of data to calibrate the state-of-the-art laser communications experiment onboard Psyche, rather than the usual string of random ones and zeros, in order to make the test ‘more memorable.’ As one member of the project, Ryan Rogalin put it, ‘everyone loves Taters.’ A cat video was also chosen as a tribute to Felix the Cat, who was the subject of the world’s first broadcast test pattern in 1928. Despite Psyche being 31 million kilometers from home and hurtling slowly towards its namesake in the asteroid belt, the Deep Space Optical Communications experiment was able to provide an amazing 267Mbps of bandwidth, which is likely a lot more than your internet connection. But before you sign yourself up for NASA’s flight laser transceiver tech, just know that the broadcast took 101 seconds to reach Earth, so the ping is atrocious. However, the experiment has demonstrated that we now have the technology to connect other worlds to the internet, and, more importantly, receive their memes.