In what is undoubtedly a first in the history of space exploration, a NASA spacecraft 19 million miles from Earth successfully transmitted a high-definition video of an adorable cat named Taters to ground stations in southern California.
“This accomplishment underscores our commitment to advancing optical communications as a key element to meeting our future data transmission needs,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals, and we look forward to the continued advancement of this technology and the transformation of how we communicate during future interplanetary missions.”
“Meow, rawhrrr, rawhrr, merrrr, yow? Yow?” said Taters, which cat language experts say means “I wish I could have caught that bright dot thing; it looked like it would taste fresh and sparkly.”
The achievement is important not only because it will let future space travelers keep up with trending social media, but also because it will allow deep space missions to transmit enormous quantities of data and high resolution images back to scientists on Earth.
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