World Space Week

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!

Moon Message

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?

Send your name to Mars

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!

Teddy bears in space

Bears in space

By Chris Thomason

I love this! Some school children from Cambridge in the UK recently sent some teddy bears into space as part of a science project, which wonderfully highlighted the UK government’s ban on astronauts.

Since the mid 1980’s, the UK government has ignored human spaceflight activity and the UK pays nothing into the astronaut programme of the European Space Agency.

T he Cambridge University Spaceflight team hope to change this and plan to put a rocket in space, launching it from a balloon that has already climbed high into the sky. The student group believes the rocket can reach an altitude of 150km.

 To gain awareness of what they want to do and as a science experiment, the Cambridge team helped local school children to send some teddy bears dressed up in space suits into the stratosphere. The picture above shows two of the bears in space with the curve of the Earth clearly visible behind them. The “teddy-nauts” spent about two hours in space before landing and being recovered from nearby Ipswich.

 ”The most important thing we think we can do is to try to encourage children to get involved in science and engineering, and the best way of doing that we thought would be with the kind of engineering project we would have loved to have done ourselves at their age,” said Ed Moore from the student organisers, Cambridge University Spaceflight.

Four teddies were prepared for the flight and dressed in their special space suits by 11 and 12-year-old pupils from Parkside and Coleridge Community Colleges in Cambridge. They were launched on a foam-padded box containing instrumentation and cameras, and the balloon climbed to 30km.

Besides being a great bit of publicity for the Cambridge rocket plans, it’s also a lovely way to get school kids involved in understanding what goes on above our heads in space.

If you know of any schools that want to transmit something interesting into deep space, then contact us. SentForever sends messages of love into deep space on a daily basis, so if you want to send something special such as an image or a sound recording or some special words, just let us know.

World Space Week

Our home - Earth

By Chris 

Did you know that October 4^th to 10^th is World Space Week? I didn’t. Apparently the United Nations General Assembly in 1999 declared October 4-10 annually as World Space Week. Today, the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna provides the overall global coordination of World Space Week, under the guidance of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and with the support of World Space Week Association, a non-government organization. 

I’m impressed that so many bodies are actively promoting the education and awareness of space across the globe. Mind you, we do often take our position here on Earth for granted. In a previous posting I spoke about the Pale Blue Dot. That view of Earth taken by a Voyager probe that shows our planet as a pale blue dot against the un-inhabitable vastness of outer space. Solitude. Precarious positioning. A living planet so remote from any other living body in space. 

I am particularly interested in the pale blue dot as I once worked for a mining company and have spent more time underground than the vast majority of people on this planet. And I mean deep underground – about a mile or more. So deep that the rock temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius and rock starts to flow over short periods of time due to the intense pressure. 

We regard Earth as our home, but in fact we can only live on the very surface of it. Some creatures do live in the ocean depths – but not humans. We are effectively trapped on the surface of a small round piece of rock, surrounded by a tenuous atmosphere floating in a loosely defined orbit in the vastness of space. Whew! 

But I’m glad – of course. As so many wondrous things happen and exist on our planet, and of course among the human race. I don’t believe for one moment that we are alone; there are other life forms out there, somewhere. Hopefully, at some time in the future, mankind may establish contact with them. It’s a long shot but I hope so.      

But by celebrating space week we are actually celebrating our potential neighbours, and hopefully educating people and broadening their awareness of what is all around us. And who knows who may be receiving the SentForever messages that are transmitted? Have a happy World Space Week.

Immortality… and two new planets

New dwarf planet

Posted by Chris 

Two new planets were discovered this week – which I find really interesting. The first is actually only a dwarf planet about one-third the size of Pluto. It orbits about 50 times further away from the sun as our Earth. It’s egg shaped with two smaller bits orbiting it due to a collision at some time in its past, and has been named Haumea after the Hawaiian mythology goddess of childbirth and fertility. 

The second is a really big planet; about eight times the size of Jupiter and it orbits a distant star about 500 light years from Earth. It was discovered by three scientists from the University of Toronto. This planet is the first one that has ever actually been seen orbiting a star other than our own sun. Previously observed planets were either free-floating in space or were inferred from collected data. 

What I find especially interesting is the difference in distance from Earth. SentForever’s eternal messages are transmitted through space at the speed of light, which means that a message sent to the dwarf planet would reach it in just under seven hours while a message to the big planet would take 500 years to reach there. Quite a difference!   

But another interesting angle is that we are excited because we have just discovered them – even though they have quietly been “doing their thing” for several billion years. It’s a bit like meeting your life-partner or soul-mate. When you actually meet them you will realize they have been on Earth for many years going about their daily lives – it’s just that you only recently discovered them. If you were a planet or a person how do you actually “announce your existence?”   

What if you were to live your life and die – and nobody knew, or nobody remembered you? Maybe that means that you never really existed! I seem to be getting a bit philosophical but I’m thinking about making sure that you are remembered. I’m thinking about immortality – ensuring that you are recognized and remembered for the rest of time.

The messages that SentForever transmit continue to travel across the Universe for the rest of eternity – so isn’t this making you immortal? I’m thinking interesting thoughts here. I’ll come back to this in a blog post the very near future.

Contact – the movie- searching for radio transmissions

Did you see the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster – made back in 1997? It’s based on Carl Sagan’s novel and it’s one of our favourite movies here at SentForever.

It’s based around the story of an astronomer who is searching for radio transmissions from other civilizations in deep space. Despite deep scepticism from people involved in the more traditional fields of science and astronomy, she perseveres and eventually finds one of these transmissions. The rest of the film follows the decoding of the transmission and how they go about following its instructions.

I was interviewed on BBC radio recently and was asked if anybody will ever receive the SentForever messages that are transmitted. It was a good question which I had to answer in two parts.

First of all – I don’t know if it will ever be received. Our transmissions go out in a narrow beam into one particular part of space ay any one time so on one hand the chances are slim. However, the transmission will last forever even though it gets weaker and weaker over time. So, on the other hand that boosts the chance of a message being received.

The other important element is that SentForever’s messages aren’t intended to be received. They are intended as eternal commitments and messages that people just want to send – and then to tell someone about what they have said. It’s called Unrequited Love.

So, if you’ve sent a SentForever message of unrequited love to someone here on Earth, then I hope they enjoyed receiving it. As to whether someone else out in the Universe will receive it – well, my answer comes in two parts….

If you sent a SentForever message, do you think it will be received? Let us know.