Alien signal beamed to Earth from Mars for first time: Report

For the first time, an alien signal has been beamed to Earth from Mars, confirmed European Space Agency on 26 May.

On Wednesday, the ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) flashed an encoded message to Earth from its orbit around Mars at 9 pm, stimulating a situation when a real signal from another civilisation is received by us, reported India Today.

“Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena. Receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilisation would be a profoundly transformational experience for all humankind," said Daniela de Paulis, the artist behind the 'A Sign in Space' project.

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An Artist in Residence at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, Paulis, brought together a team of international experts, space scientists, and artists to create a project to explore the process of interpreting and decoding an extraterrestrial message.

As part of the project, the signal was beamed by the European probe and was 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 take part in decoding and interpreting the content of the message. The decoding and interpretation process will determine both the technical and cultural content of the message," the project website read.

The message has been designed and encoded by de Paulis and her team, and is currently undisclosed. Further, the project has requested people to send in their interpretation of the message.

“This experiment is an opportunity for the world to learn how the SETI community, in all its diversity, will work together to receive, process, analyze, and understand the meaning of a potential extraterrestrial signal,” India Today quited ATA Project Scientist Dr Wael Farah as saying.

“More than astronomy, communicating with ET will require a breadth of knowledge. With 'A Sign in Space', we hope to make the initial steps towards bringing a community together to meet this challenge,” Dr Farah added.