October 4 – 10, this year will represent the 10th celebration of World Space Week. The United Nations General Assembly declared World Space Week in 1999. The celebration of World Space Week is under the guidance of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs based in Vienna, Austria. 

There are annual event at the national and local levels held all over the planet, but one really exciting area is where teachers can use the week to get their students interested in space.

This year SentForever are working with the WSW executive to allow every school and every student, as well as members of the public, to send a message into space. Messages can be sent here and they will be transmitted at the speed of light into deep space.

The messages travel so fast that if an eight year old sent a message, then by the time they leave school at 18, their message would have had time to pass by 11 of the nearest stars to Earth. It would also have traveled around 58,000,000,000,000 miles by that time or about 94 million million kilometers.

If you know of a science teacher or a school that may want to give it a go – send this on to them!

Hello from SentForever to Hello from Earth. It’s great to see another opportunity for people to send mesages into space with the Hello from Earth site sending their message on 24th August 2009. 

They are transmitting a message towards a planet that orbits around the star Gliese 581 which will arrive there around December 2029. Even though deep space messages travel at the speed of light, their radio signal will need to cross 20.3 light-years (or 192 trillion kms) of interstellar space before reaching the planet.

It sounds like a long way, but Gliese is one of the 100 closest stars to Earth, making it a top target for sending and hopefully receiving a message within our lifetimes. Any response will need to travel the same way back, so unless Gliesans have improved communication technologies, the soonest we could hope to receive an answer would be in 42 years around 2051.

The message was created by Cosmos magazine to celebrate National Science Week in Australia which is an annual event now in its 12th year. It’s also supported by the Australian Government’s Department of Innovation. Industry, Science and Research. Good to see a government being on board with a project like this.

You may remember that in April 2009 SentForever transmitted a message from the people of Belgium called Hartelijke Groeten aan Iedereen (Warm Greetings to Everyone) which was the message created by a Belgian television show. We’ve sent a Hello from Earth message naturallyand we certainly wish them well with their transmission!

In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon – and as a tribute to NASA and the pioneering spirit of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, the first space walkers to land on the moon – “Space Talk,” Asha Puthli’s classic track has been transmitted into deep space. Last year The Beatles’ “Across the Universe” was successfully transmitted by NASA.

“Space Talk” is travelling across the Universe at the speed of light, that’s 186,000 miles every second. Travelling at the speed of light the transmission the song could complete 1,401 return journeys between the Earth and the moon in an hour.

In a strange twist of fate, 40 years ago the spectacular image of the Moon landing graced the front cover of Life Magazine (Dec. 12, 1969 issue). The back cover is a double page fold out ad featuring Asha Puthli’s first modeling assignment after she landed in the U.S. From Space Walk to Space Talk.

In recent years, the underground 1970’s classic from the album The Devil is Loose has become a heavily sampled popular hip-hop break record. Asha Puthli has co-writer credits with Jay-Z, P.Diddy, Big Moe, Jermaine Dupri, SWV and The Notorious B.I.G. on the track “The World is Filled” from the multi-platinum album, Life After Death.

Recognized in critical circles as a fusion pioneer, Asha’s distinctive, unusual recordings predate fusion of East and West celebrated today in styles like hip-hop, worldbeat, and electronica by almost 20 years. Acclaimed for her vocals on the “Science Fiction” album by jazz iconoclast Ornette Coleman, Asha shared the Downbeat Critics’ Poll award for “Best Female Jazz Vocalist” alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Dee Dee Bridgewater.

“Space Talk” was hailed as an instant classic by the New York Times and Thom Jurek of allmusic.com praises the record as “a masterpiece of snakey, spaced-out soul and pre-mainstream disco. More information on “Space Talk” and Asha Puthli can be found at www.AshaPuthli.com.

We are often asked if aliens will ever receive the messages that we transmit. The answer is that we don’t actually know. As our messages travel forever there’s obviously a chance that someday someone somewhere may actually receive it. But until that happens….

Quite a few of the messages that we send are from people who feel that we aren’t alone on this planet and that out there somewhere in the Universe are other beings. Whether these other beings are an alien race or even God or some other supreme being they probably couldn’t say. But it’s just that belief that we aren’t alone in this Universe.

It’s always an interesting question to ask whether we are alone, but the answer that Jodie Foster gave to this question in the film Contact was that “If we are all alone, then it seems an awful waste of space”.

Many of the people who send messages are asking for guidance or inspiration, but especially they’d like some kind of sign or acknowledgement that we aren’t alone. 

How people receive that acknowledgement is probably entirely unique to each person. However, at SentForever we are great believers in synchronicity and we feel that we sometimes receive inspiration and guidance in the form of unusual coincidences. But more about synchronicity another time…

It’s almost 40 years since man landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.  Apparently he was supposed to say “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” but the “a” was missed out. 

Initially, Armstrong confirmed that he did say “a man” but the technology of the day failed to pick it up. But a digital audio analysis conducted by Peter Shann Ford, an Australia-based computer programmer, claims that Armstrong did, in fact, say “a man”, but the “a” was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time. Armstrong has since said that he prefers the version that is now generally accepted.

Buzz Aldrin who was the second man on the moon said “Magnificent desolation” as his first words after stepping onto the moon’s surface.

What I find interesting to think about is just what might have been said if somebody were landing on the moon for the first time today. How would the issues that affect us right now have influenced what was said?

If major corporate sponsors had been involved, would the astronaut’s space suits have looked more like a Formula One racing driver’s outfit covered in branded patches? Would we have got more of a pithy sound bite rather than a dramatic statement? Who knows!

However, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Armstrong’s famous message from the moon, SentForever will shortly be allowing people to send free messages into space. Maybe your words for your loved one will mean just as much to them as Armstrong’s did to mankind forty years ago.

What do you think man’s first words from the moon might be if we landed there today?

Immortality means unending life or enduring fame. Well, perhaps we do a little of this at SentForever as we allow people to send messages or images of themselves and their loved ones that will last forever. 

We read about an artist who uses the ashes of loved ones her clients have lost in the paintings she does. Val Thompson from Ash2Art adds the secret ingredient to her paint to create a unique, personalised and lasting tribute. She just mixes it in, adding another dash ‘to help build up a bit of texture on the canvas’.

This is a wonderful concept as it is a highly personalized and very meaningful way of capturing an image that means a lot to the person and yet which is also so intimate, in that it contains the lost one’s ashes.

One client lost her husband from a heart attack the day after returning from a beach holiday. Val took some of the ashes and created three wonderful beach scenes to capture the last memories of the lady’s husband

We love this idea as it helps someone’s memory live on after their death in much the same way that our remembrance messages do.

The Hartelijke Groeten aan Iedereen golden record from the people of Belgium is now travelling through space on its eternal journey. If you want to track how far it has travelled at any time just go to the SentForever home page and enter this tracking code – SF59077054410D05 – in the “Track your message” box.

The golden record message containing a video of the life and success of the Belgian people was the end result of the Belgium TV Een series Hartelijke Groeten aan Iedereen. This radio message overtook the original golden records sent on the 1977 Voyager space probes after only 12 hours. This is because the SentForever radio transmissions travel at the speed of light which is about 671,000,000 miles per hour.

The Hartelijke Groeten aan Iedereen TV series (which means Warm Greetings from Everyone) ends with a deep space transmission by SentForever. It has been nominated for a Golden Rose at the prestigious Montreux Festival in the entertainment category. We wish all the Hartelijke Groeten aan Iedereen team success at the Festival in May this year.

Los Angeles, California  April 7, 2009 — Darren Farris may be picking up new fans in some unlikely places this week, after he becomes the first American artist to launch a new song into deep space.

The Los Angeles based singer/songwriter’s latest single ‘Save Me’ was transmitted into deep space on Wednesday, by SentForever. It was broadcast in the form of radio waves that travel at the speed of light and will travel through space for the rest of time.

Traveling at a speed of 670 million miles an hour, ‘Save Me’ passed by the sun eight minutes after transmission and left our solar system just five hours later.

When asked about his music someday being the first musical communication to be received by extraterrestrial life, Farris says, “Hopefully the lyrics will be meaningful and representative of mankind’s feelings towards each other, and of course, everybody likes a good song!”

However, he jokes, “I just hope they don’t wake me up in the middle of the night asking for a tour of the planet.”

SentForever usually transmits people’s messages of love, remembrance and celebration into deep space where they travel through space and time for all eternity.

Stephanie Baillache, co-founder of SentForever says, “Darren’s song ‘Save Me’ is a very meaningful song and he deserves to be the first US artist to debut a single this way.” She adds, “It’s also great that if the transmission is ever received by some distant life form, a ballad like ‘Save Me’ is one of the first songs they receive from Earth.”

NASA have announced that people can submit their names for inclusion in a microchip to be sent to Mars.

Sometime in 2011 a rocket will blast off to Mars with the Mars Science Laboratory rover inside. This rover will explore part of the Martian landscape and carry out a number of interesting experiments. The MSL is being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

In this rover will be a microchip with a list of people’s names  – and your name can be one of them. Just follow this link to submit your name.

However, if Mars isn’t far enough for you, you can always send a SentForever message into eternity instead!

by Chris Thomason

Some great news in that Virgin Mobile have partnered with SentForever to allow all mobile users to send a text into space simply by sending a message to 80995 (in the UK). Here’s the press release:

Virgin Mobile today announce the launch of ‘Texts into Space’, a service which allows people to send their text declarations of love and affection into the uncharted territories of space where they will travel through the cosmos for all eternity.

Ever said ‘I’ll love you forever’? Well now you can prove it!

Launching just in time for Christmas this is a unique gift idea for any loved one. The texts are transmitted via a satellite Earth Station in Cornwall by SentForever.com. Once sent you can ensure your message will live on eternally, a concept that will surely touch the recipients heart.

The ‘text into space’ costs the price of a normal text and can be sent from any mobile phone by texting the desired message to the Virgin Mobile short code 80995. Then, for just £9.95, the message recipient will receive a formal ‘Certificate of Transmission’ from SentForever.com confirming the launch of the eternal message and details of how to track the message on the SentForever.com website as it continues to travel through time and space. Email updates are also available to alert the recipient as to when their message has passed key milestones.

Tim Dowling from Virgin Mobile said “We are quite literally over the moon at the thought of millions of wishes and messages of love being texted into space”.

Stephanie Baillache, Managing Director of SentForever.com, said, “We are delighted to be working with a leading telecoms organisation such as Virgin Mobile. The collaboration of these two innovative brands will ensure our exciting service reaches a much wider audience and thankfully there are no roaming charges in space!”