The Beagle has landed! Testing Delay Tolerant Networking

NASA sends pet photos and videos to space as test data over laser links during a May 2024 demonstration. The content was sent from a computer at a missions operations center in Las Cruces, New Mexico; to optical ground stations in California and Hawaii; to NASA’s LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration) relay satellite; and then to the Lincoln Laboratory–developed ILLUMA-T (Integrated LCRD Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) on the International Space Station, where it was stored and transmitted back.