Since the beginning of space travel, humanity has used radio frequency communications to establish contact with astronauts and spacecraft outside our planet.
However, today, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continues to test other alternatives, such as lasers, in curious ways: by sending content about pets to the International Space Station (ISS).
According to the US agency, they decided to send more than 500 photographs and videos of dogs, cats, horses and even reptiles to test their new end-to-end bidirectional laser relay system, where the material traveled from Earth to the ISS and back. return.
The tour of the images and clips, he explained, began on a computer installed within a mission operations center in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From there, data was sent to optical ground stations in California and Hawaii.
In these places, the teams modulated the data into laser signals, which they then sent to the organization’s so-called Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), located just over 35 thousand kilometers from our planet in geosynchronous orbit.
During the process, the LCRD served as a relay of sorts, transmitting data to ILLUMA-T, a terminal currently being assembled outside the International Space Station.
As a curious fact, the pet material was collected by NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Christina Koch and Kjell Lindgren.
