NASA wants to send your messages, tweets and selfies into space

What would you like to say to aliens? That might not be a rhetorical question: NASA really does plan to collect messages from members of the public that it’ll send into space as some kind of intergalactic time capsule. (And who knows who or what might find them…)

Next summer, NASA’s New Horizons probe, which was launched in 2006, will finally reach Pluto. Once it’s finished transmitting info to earth, it will have a lot of memory left over. We can send files back to the probe in around four hours (about as long as it takes me to download a movie), so before it disappears from our galaxy forever, science journalist and space artist Jon Lomberg suggested we fill it with digital mementoes from Earth. He’s passionate about the idea because he was design director for astronomer Carl Sagan’s Golden Record project, which collected a series of sounds and images from Earth on gramophone records and sent them into space on the Voyager 1 and 2 probes back in 1977. New Horizons is the first object since then that will leave our solar system.

When he approached NASA, they were initially unenthusiastic, but following a concerted campaign from Lomberg, they’ve now reconsidered and will be taking submissions from around the world starting in early 2015. You’ll be able to submit your Vine, tweet, photo, or whatever other message you think summarises life in the 20-teens. Lomberg and his team at the New Horizons Message Initiative will vet them for anything NSFS (not safe for space) and send their favourites on to NASA for the final decision. There will also be the chance to vote for your favourites. NASA has already proven itself to be a selfie enthusiast, making a “Global Selfie” in honour of Earth Day, so your best duck face could be in with a shot.

Image via Sweetle187′s Flickr.

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Diane Shipley



Diane ShipleyNASA wants to send your messages, tweets and selfies into space
  • johnstclair

    @.. When an alien Commander intercepted Sagan’s message from the Arecibo telescope, neither Cornell nor NASA paid any attention to the two crop circles left by the Commander. One design showed his face and the other indicated his biology was based on silicon. It means that NASA is not interested in finding extraterrestrial life. So what is the use of NASA sending another message?

    We already have an underground base on Mars called MEPI. So what is the use of NASA sending rovers to Mars?

  • QA36

    To be deemed NSFS comment follows: Dear interstellar traveling recipient, I regret to inform you that I come from a planet controlled by small yet very influential groups who deny your existence and have gone to great measures to keep our populous uninformed on all matters pertaining to life beyond our planet. This massive lie is widely accepted because our species is conditioned from a young age to be of a herd mentality and taught it is dangerous to question the status quo. On our planet media and politics can be bought, and have already gone to the highest bidders. This greed has also robbed us of medicinal advancements and all technology that could have brought us free energy. We are basically a planet of slaves who mostly do not realize they are enslaved. If you believe, as I do, that our species has potential for greatness if liberated through education – please demonstrate for all the people of earth the reality of extraterrestrial intelligence in a manner so that your existence will be undeniable. We extend our hands to you in both a gesture of greeting and also a request for aid, so that we may one day interact openly as equals with yourselves and other galactic and intergalactic civilizations.