NASA has sent a cat video some 31 million kilometers (19 million miles).

The space agency used a deep space laser onboard the Psyche satellite to beam the video down to Earth.

The latest Deep Space Optical Communications experiment comes after NASA first sent a near-infrared laser signal in November.

Psyche's main mission is to study the metallic asteroid Psyche, which it is due to reach in 2028. As well as testing laser communications, Psyche is the first probe to use Hall effect ion thrusters.

In the latest test, NASA sent a 15-second video of an orange tabby cat named Taters chasing a laser dot.

With the satellite some 80 times the distance between Earth and the Moon at the time of transmission, it took 101 seconds for the laser to reach Earth.

It was sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second, and received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California.

“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo’s project manager at JPL.

“But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission.”