telemedicine

We have normalized video calls so much that we hardly think about what happens behind when we press a button and another person appears on the screen. We do it daily, with WhatsApp, FaceTime or any other platformwithout stopping at the network, the servers and the connections that hold that conversation in real time. It is a technology that we take for granted, even when we use it thousands of kilometers away within the Earth itself. But as soon as we leave that environment and go much further, to hundreds of thousands of kilometers, what seemed everyday begins to take on another dimension. ‘Hello’ from space. That change of scenery we talked about has a very specific example in Artemis II. The mission took off on April 2, 2026 and has taken astronauts back to the Moon after more than 50 years without manned flights in that area. In the middle of that journey, a milestone has occurred that until now we had not seen on this scale: video calls made from deep space through a platform called VSee. Wiseman’s message. Beyond the technical milestone, there is a scene that sums it all up. Reid Wisemanmission commander, posted a message on X in mid-flight that allows us to understand what that connection really means. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder… it didn’t take 219,669 miles to remind me how much I love Ellie and Katey,” he wrote, alluding to his daughters. Ellie and Katey are precisely his two daughters, and the message has special weight because Wiseman was widowed in 2020, when his wife, Carroll, died. The figure is not minor either: at that moment, the ship was about 219,669 miles from Earth, about 353,500 kilometers. Click to see the original publication in X Before Artemis. Although what we are seeing now marks an obvious leap, the truth is that video calls in space are not an absolute novelty. On the International Space Station, astronauts have been using video communication systems for years, both to talk to their families and to collaborate with teams on Earth.Video exchanges were already taking place in 2010 for educational purposes, and by 2015 this practice is described as common within the station’s operations. That is to say, the novelty is not in speaking by video outside of Earth, but in doing so at this distance. The difference. The International Space Station moves in low Earth orbit, a few hundred kilometers high, while the Artemis II Orion capsule has reached hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Earth during its trajectory around the Moon. In addition, it reached distances that exceed historical records of manned missions, including the maximum so far attributed to Apollo 13. For this reason, everything indicates that a video call made at that point is the furthest ever made by humans. Why telemedicine. This is where one of the most striking questions appears. If we are talking about a video call, why not use conventional tools like the ones we use every day? The answer has more to do with the conditions of the communication than with the function itself. Solutions like those of VSee have been designed to operate in networks with high latency, data loss and unstable connections, just the type of environment that NASA had already been facing for years in its space communications. More than a question of brand or custom, the key is the robustness of the system. The network that makes it possible. For this conversation to be sustained, a good application is not enough. Behind it is a global infrastructure designed specifically for deep space: the NASA Deep Space Network. This system is supported by three large stations located at strategic points on the planet, in Goldstone (United States), Madrid (Spain) and Canberra (Australia), which work in a coordinated manner to maintain continuous contact as the Earth rotates. In the case of Spain, the Madrid station is part of the network that makes this type of link possible, something especially relevant to understand that these communications also depend on infrastructure located in Europe. Images | POT In Xataka | There is a spontaneous competition to design the “flag of Humanity.” And the best design is an engraving of the Pioneer