An orange tabby named Taters is getting his 15 seconds of fame after NASA streamed an ultra high-definition video of him back to Earth from deep space. The space agency announced Monday that the 15-second video had been successfully beamed earlier this month via flight laser transceiver.
Watch above.
The clip, which shows Taters appropriately chasing a laser beam, was sent from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and took 101 seconds to travel 18.6 million miles back to our home planet—the farthest distance yet recorded. Officials said the experiment had been conducted to test communications over long distances, something necessary if humans are to eventually inhabit other parts of the solar system.
“Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said in a statement. Most importantly, the space agency noted that Taters—who belongs to a staffer in the laboratory—was not physically in deep space. “Everybody loves Taters,” noted Ryan Rogalin, the lab’s electronics lead.
