On December 11th, NASA engineers deployed their NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, testing a new system designed to send video information by lasers from great distances. The distance was 19 million miles, which is how far the asteroid-hunting space probe Psyche is now. A video was beamed to earth and intercepted successfully, proving the technology has the chops to relay videos throughout our solar system.
The video displayed test patterns, space data, and a video of a cat named Taters chasing a laser light. NASA engineers love a cute cat video as much as the rest of us, and the laser light was an appropriate touch. Taters belongs to a NASA employee, and now he's a famous contributor to our space exploration program, and may have been intercepted by any aliens moving through our solar system. Read more about the communications experiment and see the video at Gizmodo.