Comment on NASA uses laser to send video of a cat named Taters over 19 million miles

TWeaK@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• eager_eagle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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…

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  • ButtDrugs@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • eager_eagle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      1.2 Tb* ~ 162GB

      Still impressive though

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    • kittyjynx@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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• ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Lower latency than broadband…?

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  • Alto@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • LostXOR@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• neptune@dmv.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  "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.

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• Primarily0617@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  if you want more bandwidth you can just use more lasers

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  • LazaroFilm@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    More lasers!!!

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