this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 95 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What’s Taters, precious?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago

Spoil em, flash em, laser out a few.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Using a laser they could just as well send the cat. He would follow the laser just as well.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Guess what the cat is doing in the video

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 66 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Video beamed. Video intercepted by aliens. Think cats rule earth.

They're right.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They'd have to be really close. This doesn't even get close to Mars or Venus.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

They are.

whistles x-files theme

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Bit annoying that they're more specific about latency than bandwidth. The laser had lower latency than broadband, but I want to know if the laser had enough bandwidth to stream the video.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/tech-demo-missions-program/deep-space-optical-communications-dsoc/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-video-from-deep-space-via-laser/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

1.2 Tb* ~ 150GB

Still impressive though

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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

I remember my first multi gig hard drive. I was blown away that I could fully install Diablo 2, Fallout 2, and a cracked version of 3d Studio Max at the same time. No more changing disks!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Lower latency than broadband...?

If you're getting >100s ping times you might want to have them come out to check your lines.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Actually, most latency issues at that scale are due to the relays themselves. Earth diameter is only 42 light-ms

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

if you want more bandwidth you can just use more lasers

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

More lasers!!!!

[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (4 children)

What strikes me is not the bandwidth achieved but the precision of the technology to aim the laser. 19 million miles is a great distance to successfully aim a beam of light. As this technology develops, real time communications with objects in orbit like around Mars will be possible.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Well realtime is just not true. But cool technology nonetheless.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I'm wondering if we will need to tweak our Internet protocols to include interplanetary time? I would imagine mirroring would be much more important. Because light can only go so fast.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Yes, the high latency and intermittent connectivity is a big challenge. Delay tolerant networking (DTN) is one good way of solving this problem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think the issue, again will be date and time.

DDMMYYYY + Planet + Orbit?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

software developers are seething

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

UTC and forget

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

The beam is reeeealy wide by the time it gets there. Still a great achivement, though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

I presume that we're not yet concerned with what the Ansible tech awoke in the vast emptiness between, hmm?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago

Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections

That guy must be a Spectrum subscriber

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"We're receiving coherent signals from the edge of the Milky Way."

"Life can exist in such isolation? What are they saying, do they need rescue?"

"It's a video of a small fuzzy animal."

"What?"

"When we probed deeper to get more context, we found millions of such videos, supposedly they're cherished non-intelligient companions and the people there wished to express that."

"...

...

What?"

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (3 children)

The article isn't terribly long, but here is the direct link to Taters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvJtVOmFs5Q

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=GvJtVOmFs5Q

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Thank you, I came here for the cat tax.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The MCRN & UNN would be proud.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Can't wait til we can start watching interplanetary wars play out in real time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Pretty sure it won't be in real time with all the light delay.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Somewhere on my work wiki is a picture of puppies that I sent over SWIFT to a bank to test that the relationship was setup properly.

Cats and dogs are always acceptable test messages

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago
  1. This is the correct use of technology. (But later let's test the ping on Doom over laserlan)

  2. Taters is very precious!!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

This tracks

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

"What's Taters?"

"Po-ta-toes... Boil um mash um stick um in a stew!"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Taters, star surfer

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