We are bombarded every second with messages from space.
Yes. At least since the first communication satellites began orbiting our planet, we've been receiving messages from space.
Of course these are relayed messages. Sent by human beings from some part of the planet and relayed by a specific communication satellite, over the horizon, to the other side of the planet, so that other human beings can receive them almost simultaneously.
Since when? The first communication satellite, of the type called passive, was the Echo 1A, released on August 12, 1950. But the first transatlantic retransmission, by the way, of television images, was carried out on July 23, 1962 by the “Telstar 1”, satellite launched by NASA on July 10, 1962. This was the first communication satellite of the active type.
Thus, just over 50 years ago, human beings on both sides of the Atlantic were able to receive television messages for the first time "reflected" in space by the Telstar 1.
In reality, all radio, television, telephone, fax, internet messages that are relayed by communication satellites also travel towards the stars, at the speed of light in a vacuum. It is that a part of all the emission of radio beams from the Earth, and that carry the messages that we want to retransmit, pierce the satellites towards the deep sky.
From space, we receive other messages sent by space telescopes and probes exploring our solar system.
The current and modern space telescopes, such as Hubble (there are dozens of others), that orbit the planet, send us messages like never before about the information they capture from the Universe. As a whole, they constitute a kind of retina sensitive to the entire range of electromagnetic radiation, which they capture from the closest or most distant Universe, in time and space.
Then they send us these astonishing messages about the first seconds of the Universe, about the explosion of a supernova, about the pulsar of a neutron star.
Our progressive knowledge of the solar system has been made through the messages we receive from the probes that human ingenuity has developed, built and sent into space.
After 500 years, the new caravels exploring outer space send us messages with information about the new worlds.
(Continued)
Antonio Piedade
Science in the Regional Press – Ciência Viva
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