In May of 2023, as part of a science-art project, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter sent a signal to Earth as a simulated “alien message.”
Although citizen scientists retrieved the signal from the raw data in only 10 days, it took longer than a year to actually decode the message.
The father-daughter team of Ken and Keli Chaffin successfully decoded the message in July of 2024 by running simulations of the signal for days, according the ESA.
It’s an interdisciplinary art project designed by contemporary dancer-turned-media artist Daniela de Paulis, who worked with SETI, the Green Back Observatory, and the European Space Agency (ESA) to simulate an alien message.
The cosmic source of this message—first transmitted to Earth back in May of 2023—was ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
De Paulis crafted the message along with astronomers, a computer scientist, a poet, and more.
Last week, the project announced that the signal was finally decoded back in July of 2024 by Ken and Keli Chaffin, a father-daughter team who ran simulations on the signal “for hours and days on end.”
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