NASA creates cat meme history with a space laser blasting a clip of Taters over 30 million kilometres

pcgamer.com:

NASA has demonstrated a successful transmission of a high-definition video from a probe over 30 million kilometres away in space. Instead of using the traditional method of radio waves, the system onboard asteroid-probe Psyche utilises a powerful near-infrared laser beam. Rather than showing us the unnerving splendour of the empty void, engineers chose a 15-second clip of Taters: An orange cat, chasing a red laser dot about a couch.

No, I haven't made this up. Our office team spotted the news on CNN and having gone through all of NASA's pages on the craft Psyche and its mission details, I can confirm that it's all 100% true: Taters is now a space legend.

Deep space probes routinely send data back to Earth, providing information on the craft's status and results from any specific experiments taking place. Normally, this is all done via a beam of radio waves, because it doesn't require a huge amount of power and the transmission is far less likely to suffer from interference.

However, radio beams are somewhat limited concerning how much data can be transmitted every second. The latest missions use every possible trick and algorithm to maximise the amount of data that can be carried in the signal, but this does have limits. To really boost the transmission rate, you need to use a higher frequency signal.

This is why the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed a 75W near-infrared laser system for the asteroid probe Psyche, which can send and receive data at transmission rates of up to 267Mbps. That's significantly higher than radio systems, which even at their very highest speed, they're still 10 times slower than lasers.

But the coolest thing about all of this is that NASA tested its capacity to transmit high-definition