As the quest for life beyond Earth continues, an extraterrestrial signal from Mars has been sent to the planet for the first time.
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) sent an encoded message to Earth from its orbit around Mars on Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. to mimic receiving a true communication from another civilisation. The signal hit Earth 16 minutes later.
Paulis, an Artist in Residence at the Search for alien Intelligence (SETI) Institute, has together a group of worldwide specialists, space scientists, and artists to construct a project that will investigate the process of decoding and interpreting an alien communication.
As part of the experiment, the signal was blasted by the European probe and received by the green bank telescope (West Virginia), the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station (Italy), the Allen Telescope Array (California), and the Very Large Array (New Mexico)
“We’re asking individuals and groups to help decode and interpret the message’s content.” “The process of decoding and interpretation will determine both the technical and cultural content of the message,” according to the project website.
It is to be noted that the message was created and encoded by de Paulis and her team and that it is still unknown. People are now being asked to submit their interpretations of the message to the initiative.
