Original photo by Planet Volumes/ Unsplash+
On October 13, 2023, NASA launched a spacecraft on a six-year journey to reach a metal-rich asteroid known as Psyche, nestled between Mars and Jupiter. The mission’s primary goal is to understand the building blocks of planet formation by analyzing Psyche’s iron composition. But another technology demonstration piggybacked on the mission: The Deep Space Optical Communications experiment used an onboard flight laser transceiver to phone ultra-high definition video back to Earth, as part of an attempt to improve data-beaming capabilities.
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It's a fibThomas Edison created the first cat film when he released “The Boxing Cats” in 1894. Edison made the film using his kinetograph, a kind of proto-camera.
During those experiments, on December 11, 2023, NASA streamed a preloaded 15-second test video from the spacecraft back to Earth — a journey of some 19 million miles. After 101 seconds, NASA received the high-res video, which displayed graphics including the spacecraft’s orbital path and technical information about the laser system. But the star of the show was undeniably an orange tabby named Taters, the feline companion of a NASA employee, who spent his 15 seconds of fame chasing a laser pointer on a couch. (The technical graphics were superimposed over Tater’s antics.) According to NASA, the successful demonstration proved that such technologies will be “essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals.” After all, Martian astronauts need to binge-watch cat videos, too.
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______ are the first and only known animals that can survive exposure to space.
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Tardigrades are the first and only known animals that can survive exposure to space.
Lasers wouldn’t exist today without the work of Albert Einstein.
Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, otherwise known as lasers, were first developed in the 1960s and subsequently transformed technology. However, their groundbreaking advancements would not have been possible without Albert Einstein. Although this former patent clerk and all-around genius is best known for his theory of general relativity, Einstein also explored the world of light. In 1917, Einstein published a paper that highlighted his quantum theory of radiation, in which (using some complicated physics and equations) he determined how coherent light can be created as atoms discharge in a chain reaction, otherwise known as “stimulated emission of radiation” — or the “ser” in “laser.” It’d take a couple of decades for scientists to nail down how to use mirrors for light amplification, but Einstein’s legacy can now be found in technologies on Earth and beyond.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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