Humans Want to Bounce Their Voices Off the Moon

A massive project, to which already a number of former astronauts and other famous people have subscribed, is currently underway to bounce people's voices off the Moon, from one point of the globe to the other. According to the radio amateurs that made this initiative a reality, parabolic and radio dishes around the world will participate in this effort, which strives to convert a number of messages into radio waves, and then send them to the Moon, where they will bounce off its surface, and return back to the planet, but in a different location. If successful, the project will be the first in the 40 years since the Apollo 11 mission to do so.

 

“We are actually sending out radio waves and shaking the electrons of the atoms of the dirt on the moon a quarter of a million miles away. We are jiggling moon dust and there’s enough energy to send back radio waves to us which we convert back to voices. To me that’s pretty profound,” Wired quotes the founder of the moon-bounce project, Pat Barthelow, as saying. He has been an amateur radio operator for the last 43 years.

 

The project will be launched on June 26, its organizers announce, and the data stream that will be sent to the Earth's natural satellite will be comprised of a multitude of messages, coming from all those involved. Naturally, as communication possibilities are somewhat limited, only a small number of messages will be sent, but the organizers hope to be able to increase this number in other transmissions. During World Moon Bounce Day, the largest ever-recorded number of radio dishes will be pointing to the Moon. “We needed to set up inter-visibility between us and Australia, a time when we could both see the moon, so it will be June 26th here and the 27th there,” Barthelow said.

 

California-based SRI International's 150-foot dish antenna has also been enlisted for the Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) transmission, which was hailed by participants. The larger the antenna, the better the signal, they say. “The difference in EME signal quality between this dish, and conventional EME antennas would be like listening to U2 in a stadium on a 10-watt, battery boom box at home plate, with you 500 feet away in the center field seats, compared to hearing U2 over a full 2-million-watt PA set up for a stadium concert. It is that radically different,” Barthelow said.