NASA uses laser to send video of a cat named Taters over 19 million miles (www.cbsnews.com)
from Rapidcreek@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 11:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9746191

#technology

threaded - newest

TWeaK@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 2023 11:39 next collapse

Bit annoying that they’re more specific about latency than bandwidth. The laser had lower latency than broadband, but I want to know if the laser had enough bandwidth to stream the video.

neptune@dmv.social on 19 Dec 2023 11:49 next collapse

"The video was then downloaded and each frame was sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where it was played in real time. "

It sounds like it. Laser comm can have some insanely high data rates due to the high frequency of the radiation.

Primarily0617@kbin.social on 19 Dec 2023 11:52 next collapse

if you want more bandwidth you can just use more lasers

LazaroFilm@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 12:43 collapse

More lasers!!!

ripcord@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 12:00 next collapse

Lower latency than broadband…?

If you’re getting >100s ping times you might want to have them come out to check your lines.

Alto@kbin.social on 19 Dec 2023 13:09 collapse

Something tells me you're not getting sub 100ms latency with broadband over 19 million miles

LostXOR@kbin.social on 19 Dec 2023 13:35 next collapse

They're new high tech lasers that go faster than the speed of light!

SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 14:52 collapse

Actually, most latency issues at that scale are due to the relays themselves. Earth diameter is only 42 light-ms

LostXOR@kbin.social on 19 Dec 2023 20:19 collapse

19 million miles is 102 light seconds.

ripcord@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 22:02 collapse

I mean, if their point was that a straight-shot laser had lower point-to-point latency than a system with a bunch of non-direct links, intermediate switches, routers, mix of copper and fiber, etc… Well, no kidding.

Didn’t say anything about 100ms though. I was guessing maybe they read 100ms though. Still not sure what the point was.

eager_eagle@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 12:32 collapse

This latest milestone comes after “first light” was achieved on Nov. 14. Since then, the system has demonstrated faster data downlink speeds and increased pointing accuracy during its weekly checkouts. On the night of Dec. 4, the project demonstrated downlink bit rates of 62.5 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 267 Mbps, which is comparable to broadband internet download speeds. The team was able to download a total of 1.3 terabits of data during that time. As a comparison, NASA’s Magellan mission to Venus downlinked 1.2 terabits during its entire mission from 1990 to 1994.

nasa.gov/…/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-video-fr…

ButtDrugs@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 2023 18:06 collapse

Honestly the 1.2 TB I’m the early 90s is an insanely impressive figure to me. I mean in that era a gigabyte seemed like an obscene amount of data, the interat ran at less than 56 kbps, and I don’t think I had a 1GB drive in my hime PC until almost the turn of the millennium. Sending and storing that much from venus is a huge accomplishment.

kittyjynx@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 18:29 next collapse

They probably stored it on tape which was slow but could hold an impressive amount of data.

I remember my first multi gig hard drive. I was blown away that I could fully install Diablo 2, Fallout 2, and a cracked version of 3d Studio Max at the same time. No more changing disks!

eager_eagle@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 18:48 collapse

1.2 Tb* ~ 150GB

Still impressive though

burt@programming.dev on 19 Dec 2023 12:02 next collapse

The article isn’t terribly long, but here is the direct link to Taters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvJtVOmFs5Q

PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks on 19 Dec 2023 12:02 next collapse

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=GvJtVOmFs5Q

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social on 19 Dec 2023 13:27 next collapse

Thank you, I came here for the cat tax.

key@lemmy.keychat.org on 19 Dec 2023 14:14 collapse

Thank goodness for “this is a test”. For a moment I was panicking about an invasion of space cats and their terrifying laser hunting capabilities.

CatZoomies@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 12:17 next collapse

What’s Taters, precious?

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works on 19 Dec 2023 13:06 next collapse

Damn, beat me to it

kambusha@feddit.ch on 19 Dec 2023 13:35 collapse

Spoil em, flash em, laser out a few.

quams69@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 12:53 next collapse

Taters, star surfer

Talaraine@kbin.social on 19 Dec 2023 13:54 next collapse

Video beamed. Video intercepted by aliens. Think cats rule earth.

They're right.

samus12345@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 17:01 next collapse

They’d have to be really close. This doesn’t even get close to Mars or Venus.

darelik@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 07:52 collapse

They are.

whistles x-files theme

Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 2023 23:48 collapse

So correct.

Rapidcreek@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 15:10 next collapse

What strikes me is not the bandwidth achieved but the precision of the technology to aim the laser. 19 million miles is a great distance to successfully aim a beam of light. As this technology develops, real time communications with objects in orbit like around Mars will be possible.

mesamunefire@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 15:24 next collapse

I’m wondering if we will need to tweak our Internet protocols to include interplanetary time? I would imagine mirroring would be much more important. Because light can only go so fast.

Rapidcreek@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 15:48 next collapse

I’m sure several OSI layers have already been modified by NASA to suit their needs. But, the protocols will pretty much remain standard.

ooterness@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 16:59 next collapse

Yes, the high latency and intermittent connectivity is a big challenge. Delay tolerant networking (DTN) is one good way of solving this problem.

Doorbook@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 17:39 next collapse

I think the issue, again will be date and time.

DDMMYYYY + Planet + Orbit?

eager_eagle@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 18:52 next collapse

UTC and forget

itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 19 Dec 2023 20:28 collapse

software developers are seething

Restaldt@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 19:23 collapse
SirHery@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 15:42 next collapse

Well realtime is just not true. But cool technology nonetheless.

[deleted] on 19 Dec 2023 15:49 collapse

.

paholg@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 2023 16:00 next collapse

It’s really not at these scales. Earth and Mars go from roughly 4 light minutes apart to over 20.

At the best case, saying something and then waiting 8 minutes for a response is hardly what I’d call “real time”.

Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Dec 2023 16:09 next collapse

Speed of light is insanely slow at the cosmic scale.

circuscritic@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 2023 16:40 collapse

No, it’s not slow, at all. It’s the speed of light.

Unfortunately for us humans, we are a relatively fast form of life, when compared against the scale of our solar system, much less our galaxy, even when communicating at the speed of light.

Rosco@sh.itjust.works on 19 Dec 2023 17:14 collapse

It’s the fastest speed information can go through space, as far as we know. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of space. And a mean a LOT.

gens@programming.dev on 19 Dec 2023 18:10 next collapse

The beam is reeeealy wide by the time it gets there. Still a great achivement, though.

littlebluespark@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 19:45 collapse

I presume that we’re not yet concerned with what the Ansible tech awoke in the vast emptiness between, hmm?

circuscritic@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 2023 15:19 next collapse

The MCRN & UNN would be proud.

paddirn@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 15:32 collapse

Can’t wait til we can start watching interplanetary wars play out in real time.

circuscritic@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 2023 15:50 next collapse

Pretty sure it won’t be in real time with all the light delay.

baltakatei@sopuli.xyz on 19 Dec 2023 17:36 collapse

Can we have space settlement without the war and genocide? It’s not like killing Indians and robbing trains is a fundamental requirement.

circuscritic@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 2023 17:52 collapse

That depends on if space is colonized by homo sapiens, or by an evolved form of ants, who rise up millions of years after humans have gone extinct.

The civilization that evolved from ants possibly could.

Humans? Doubtful.

Sconrad122@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 18:57 collapse

You are giving ants way too much credit. Those fuckers are brutal war criminals, the lot of them. Humans are bad, but we’ve had nukes for almost 80 years without glassing ourselves, ants wouldn’t last a day

circuscritic@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 2023 19:05 next collapse

No, because I’m assuming that one colony will wipe out the rest and earth will be ruled by the hereditary line of matriarchs of whatever the queen ant evolves into.

They’ll probably enslave and brutalize all other species on the planet, but they’ll rule earth as a single unified colony, and space as an extension of that.

Promethiel@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 17:45 collapse

They need to be harnessed into biological CPUs by hyper-advanced dog sized jumping spiders. It’s the only use for those murderous six legged maniacs.

KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 2023 15:53 next collapse

This tracks

dhork@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 17:25 next collapse

Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections

That guy must be a Spectrum subscriber

Michal@programming.dev on 19 Dec 2023 17:46 next collapse

Using a laser they could just as well send the cat. He would follow the laser just as well.

Rapidcreek@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 2023 17:50 next collapse

Guess what the cat is doing in the video

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 07:15 collapse

Taxes?

z00s@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 03:08 collapse

Faster than light travel achieved

Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 2023 23:50 next collapse

  1. This is the correct use of technology. (But later let’s test the ping on Doom over laserlan)

  2. Taters is very precious!!

whoisearth@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 2023 23:56 next collapse

Somewhere on my work wiki is a picture of puppies that I sent over SWIFT to a bank to test that the relationship was setup properly.

Cats and dogs are always acceptable test messages

doctorcrimson@lemmy.today on 20 Dec 2023 00:37 next collapse

“We’re receiving coherent signals from the edge of the Milky Way.”

“Life can exist in such isolation? What are they saying, do they need rescue?”

“It’s a video of a small fuzzy animal.”

“What?”

“When we probed deeper to get more context, we found millions of such videos, supposedly they’re cherished non-intelligient companions and the people there wished to express that.”

“…

What?”

NegativeInf@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 18:40 collapse

This strikes me with a “They’re made of meat?!” vibe.

MeatPilot@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 02:18 next collapse

“What’s Taters?”

“Po-ta-toes… Boil um mash um stick um in a stew!”

Ajsra@lemmy.ml on 20 Dec 2023 07:29 next collapse

That is cute. But why a cat?

Sanyanov@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 08:06 next collapse

Because cute

Ajsra@lemmy.ml on 20 Dec 2023 10:31 collapse

Right. I guess I kinda agree.

Promethiel@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 17:49 collapse

Joke answer: It’s cute.

Real answer: It’s cute and because of that broad appeal it’s easy good PR. NASA has to appeal to the populace to hope they demand their Representatives properly fund them.

DigitalFrank@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 18:09 next collapse

Taters should have his own wikipedia page. First outer space cat video.

Boiglenoight@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 2023 21:54 next collapse

Everything’s fun and games until the Kilrathi discover this and its point of origin.

Vendul@feddit.de on 19 Dec 2023 11:03 collapse