Perhaps cosmic karma for all the uncaught red dots, NASA used a laser beam to transmit a cat video from a probe 19 million miles away back to Earth in a demonstration to prove the viability of near-infrared laser communications, IFL Science reports.
As part of the Psyche mission to an object in the asteroid belt with the same name, NASA loaded a video of an orange cat named Taters unsuccessfully pursuing the Taunting Red Dot, not to be confused with the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, onto the probe, which blasted the laser back to Earth from an area of space outside the Moon’s orbit. The test showed that the laser could transmit the 15-second video at 267 megabits per second, delivering the entire file in 101 seconds.
“Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections,” said JPL’s Ryan Rogalin. “In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space.”