NASA beamed a cat video across 19 million miles of space

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NASA, our very own cosmic voyagers, have chucked a cat video across the celestial void, over 19 million miles, and straight into our earthly lap.

And not just any ol’ cat video—a high-definition, 15-second slice of feline fame featuring Taters. Yup, Taters.

As reported by Jalopnik, this historic event took place on December 11, beaming a video of Taters chasing a laser pointer (yes, the irony) via a flight laser transceiver from the Psyche spacecraft.

This isn’t your grandma’s dial-up connection; we’re talking a crisp 101-second transmission at 267 megabits per second, states NASA’s press release. That’s enough to make your home Wi-Fi look like any Xfinity home internet setup.

The Psyche craft, which is en route to a metal-rich asteroid that could be the secret sauce to understanding planetary cores, doubled as a broadcaster for this historic feline film premiere.

The Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory caught the signal and sent it zipping to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This wasn’t just for giggles and kicks, though. Behind Taters’ laser-chasing antics lies a serious push for the future.

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) project aims to ramp up data transmission to support the next wave of interplanetary communication—think Mars with instant HD video calling.

The success of this catastrophically awesome event marks a “historic milestone” for space communication.

As Psyche continues its journey, it’ll keep flinging high-data-rate signals back to Earth, setting the stage for human missions to the Red Planet that don’t skimp on the data.

In essence, NASA’s saying, “Hey, future Mars settlers, If we can stream Taters in all his glory from millions of miles away, who knows what’s next?”

Martian blogs? Intergalactic TikToks? The sky’s not the limit anymore—it’s just the starting line.

So, hats off to the Deep Space Optical Communications team. You’ve taken cat videos to a whole new level, and honestly, it’s pretty awesome. Also, a big congrats to Taters, the cat who’s now officially out of this world.

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.