14 DAY TRIAL // The One Earth Message project, led by one Jon Lomberg, hopes to get NASA's blessing to beam a crowdsourced message comprising sounds and images standing as proof of the diversity of life on our planet to the New Horizons probe.
The message, which Jon Lomberg and fellow space enthusiasts like to call an Earth selfie, is intended for aliens. Supposing that they exist and have the tools needed to decode digital messages in a spacecraft, of course.
New Horizons is now en route to dwarf planet Pluto
The New Horizons spacecraft launched in January 2006 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, US. Come July 14 this year, it will complete a flyby of dwarf planet Pluto and accompanying moons.
With a little bit of luck, this flyby will bring the New Horizons space vehicle within a measly 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of its target orb. When this close to Pluto, the probe will get to study its geography in unprecedented detail.
Once it completes its Pluto mission, the NASA probe will venture even deeper into the Kuiper belt, a region of our Solar System that extends beyond the planetary system per se and that comprises millions of icy objects.
If still functioning, the probe will then be sent to explore the farthest ends of our cosmic neighborhood. Eventually, the New Horizons spacecraft will simply drift into space, never again to return to Earth.
New Horizons makes the perfect cosmic postal worker
Seeing how its mission will carry it into deep space, the team behind the One Earth Message project thinks that this NASA probe that is now on its way to the Pluto system would make a perfect cosmic postal worker.
Thus, they hope that the Earth selfie they want to beam to the space vehicle will one day be found and decoded by an alien civilization. Who knows, this alien civilization might prove courteous and polite enough to reply.
“Sometime in the next million years, an alien might find it, read the message, and remember the distant Earth. People from every country will have the opportunity to submit photos and other content.”
“Everyone will have the chance to view and vote online for the ones they think should be sent. It will be a global project that brings the people of the world together to speak as one,” reads the project's description.
Not our first message to civilizations at the edge of space
Just before their launch in 1977, NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft had records of sounds and images here on Earth loaded aboard them, just in case aliens find the probes and might want to learn more about our home planet.
Interestingly, the same Jon Lomberg who is now trying to get the One Earth Message off the ground was behind the idea to put golden records documenting life on our planet aboard the 1977 twin Voyager spacecraft.
