On Thursday, June 5th, NASA used a laser beam to send a video from the International Space Station to Earth.

On Thursday, June 5th, NASA used a laser beam to send a video from the International Space Station to Earth. It was their first time testing out the advanced technology.

The video itself is called ‘Hello World’ and is a quick history of modern communications means leading up to their own accomplishment– information transfer through space via laser beams.

Optical communications are a big part of NASA’s exploratory future as they can transmit information from afar at unprecedented speeds.

At present, they rely primarily upon sending information through radio frequencies. Switching to lasers could make the data transfer rates up to a thousand times higher.

The June 5th optical video communication was the first in a mission called Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science, or OPALS for short.

"The OPAL payload will trasmit a high-definition video from the space station down to the ground on a laser beam."[NASA]

The beam was picked up by the Table Mountain Observatory in Wrightwood, California and sent along to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

NASA has since made the approximately 35-second ‘Hello World’ video available for viewing on YouTube.