On the path to Mars, nearly 19 million miles from Earth, Taters the cat got his big break.

The orange tabby starred in the first video streamed from deep space, a successful NASA experiment that marked a milestone for advancing humans’ ability to send communications from beyond Earth’s orbit.

A playful clip of Taters, who belongs to a NASA employee, was sent from a spacecraft to Earth last week, the agency announced Monday. Soon, scientists say, the same laser technology that beamed Taters to an observatory in California could allow astronauts to send videos from Mars.

The innovation could transform how spacecraft communicate on interplanetary missions, NASA said, and it is already being prepared for use by the next astronauts who go to the moon. It would allow broadband video, scientific information and high-definition imagery to be sent home from distances far beyond the moon, and at high speeds.

“What we’ve done is taken this technology that’s been used in satellites orbiting near-Earth and around the moon … and extended that range out to deep space,” said Malcolm Wright, flight laser lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This demonstration we just did … is really showing the ability of the technology.”