NASA’s antiquated radio based data transfer system, typically required about 10 minutes to transfer a 300MB file over the 4Mbps network. However, with the recent additions of laser based digital link, they managed to transfer the following video in a short 3.5 seconds. The complexity of aligning the laser from an orbiting station, to Earth, was said to be equivalent of to “aiming a laser pointer at the end of a human hair 30 feet away and keeping it there while walking.” The speed increase was said to be like going from dialup to DSL. Watch the video they beamed down above, and read more here.
