Cats are conquering space thanks to NASA’s laser technology

It was clear that cats would conquer the universe one day or another. It’s finally done! A video shows a friendly employee traveling nearly 30 million kilometers into space using laser technology tested by NASA.

Science has taken a giant (and velvety) step forward with this successful NASA experiment. The space probe of the Psyche mission, responsible for analyzing the asteroid of the same name, Transmit to Earth a video of a cat in high resolution – A 30-million-kilometre flight at full speed with a laser: it only took 101 seconds to reach Earth, in this case the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

One small step for cats, one giant leap for humanity

More than transfer speed, video quality was above all else important: the laser technology used in this test reached 267Mbps, which is faster than many Internet users. ” Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our scientific and exploration goals “, explains Pam Milroy, NASA administrator.

Having such a data transmission capability will indeed be crucial for manned missions to Mars, whether sending and receiving high-resolution images or large packages of complex scientific information. And also cat videos!

The 15-second video shows Taters, a JPL employee cat, chasing a laser pointer on a couch. Overlay graphics have been added, indicating the probe’s orbital path, technical information about the laser (transmission path, not pointer, etc.), and data rate. It also includes the Taters’ heart rate, color, and breed (you never know, maybe some aliens will come across this video and wonder who this hairy creature is). The video in question can be watched below:

The selection of a cat for this successful experiment was a tribute to the first terrestrial television broadcast made in 1928: it was a video of a figurine of Felix the cat! Cats certainly exist wherever humanity has progressed.

source :

NASA