Caturday felid trifecta: NASA sends a video into space of cat chasing laser dot; the Internet is made of cats; cats being bad; and lagniappe

I’ve been first item has been sent, from one source or another, many times, and it’s time to put it on a Caturday Felid post.

From IFL Science (first headline below):

The first streaming video carried by laser beam from beyond the Moon has been received from 31 million kilometers (19 million miles) away. For extra points, it’s ultra-high definition (and very cute).

Among the technical challenges required for human colonization of the Solar System, improved communication systems may not be top of mind. However, when you consider how painfully long it took New Horizons to send back its images from its brief flyby of Pluto, it’s clear we need to pick up the pace.

Last month, NASA conducted a demonstration of the practicality of using near-infrared laser beams to transmit data from the Psyche mission, then at a distance of 16 million kilometers (10 million miles) from Earth.

At the time, NASA HQ’s Trudy Kortes described that achievement in a statement as “One of many critical […] milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.”

The scientific information may have to wait until spacecraft Psyche reaches its destination, the metal-rich asteroid of the same name, but the streaming videos are here right on time. The technical challenges of sending something like this are immense, and get larger the longer the video, so NASA wanted to keep it short. In that context, what could be a more appropriate introduction than 15 seconds of a cat chasing a laser dot?

Here’s the video. The cat is named Taters:

IFL Science:

 

 

ScienceAlert:

And an excerpt:

NASA on Monday announced it had used a state-of-the-art laser communication system on a spaceship 19 million miles (31 million kilometers) away from Earth – to send a high-definition cat video.

The 15-second meow-vie featuring an orange tabby named Taters is the first to be streamed from deep space, and demonstrates it’s possible to transmit the higher-data-rate communications needed to support complex missions such as sending humans to Mars.

The video was beamed to Earth using a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is journeying to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to explore a mysterious metal-rich object. When it sent the video, the spaceship was 80 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.

The encoded near-infrared signal was received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, and from there sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo’s project manager at JPL.

“But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission.”

. . . ​So why a cat video? First, there’s the historic connection, said JPL. When American interest in television began growing in the 1920s, a statue of Felix the Cat was broadcast to serve as a test image.

And here’s that broadcast:

and, finally:

And while cats may not claim the title as man’s best friend, few can dispute their number-one position when it comes to internet videos and meme culture.

​Uploaded before launch, the clip shows Tabby, the pet of a JPL employee, chasing a laser light on a couch, with test graphics overlayed. These include Psyche’s orbital path and technical information about the laser and its data bit rate.

And that brings us to the next post: the Internet is synonymous with CATS:

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Here’s a 13 year old video, three minutes long, that speaks—or rather sings—truth to power. Note the presence of His Holiness Ceiling Cat at 1:31. Maru is in there, too.

Now when you do a Google search for “cats”, you see two things. First, the results: nearly 7.5 billion sites!

And you see this on the Google page. Click on the screenshot below, and then press the cat’s-paw button where I’ve added an arrow. See what happens! (Sound up, too.)

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Here is an 8½-minute video of cats doing what they shouldn’t be doing. (Actually, they behave appropriately in some instances.) My favorite is the cat taking a ciggie at 3:56. Also note “peacekeeper cat” at 5:52.

Unlike the video above, this one’s actually good.

 

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Finally, lagniappe from reader Barry:

I sometimes have cats stay with me over the holidays (via a cat-sitting service in NYC). This one is a Scottish Fold. Her name is Ivy. She is adorable, but in this photo she looks alarmed. “Why do you put whipped cream on the lower half of your face and then scrape it off?”

h/t: Ginger K.