Father and son decode signals from Mars

According to ESA, father and son Ken and Keli Chaffin were the first people to crack the code. The message was sent from ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter as part of a citizen science project in May 2023. Three radio observatories on Earth received this message. The data is then made available to the public. The first step is to extract the signal from the raw data, and the second step is to decode it.

The message revealed was an image depicting the structure of five amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This message is part of “A Sign in Space” – a science/art project exploring how humanity might react after receiving a real message from aliens. It took the online community only 10 days to extract the message from the original data, but decoding was more difficult: It wasn’t until June 7, 2024 that the two people sent a message to Daniela de Paulis, founder and director of the data. Art director of the project, about the solution. ESA announced their success on October 22.

According to “A Sign in Space”, this was the brainchild of a group of “simulated aliens”, including de Paulis, a computer scientist, a poet, a radio engineer, a physicists and space lawyers, and a number of astronomers and astrobiologists.

This project also received support from the SETI Institute – a non-profit organization specializing in the search for extraterrestrial life – and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. Decoding the message requires many hours of computer simulation. The father and son were successful in realizing the message included several biological characteristics, the ESA said.

But what did the aliens want to convey by sending a picture of five amino acids? That mystery still needs to be solved. Currently, scientists are gathering on a Discord server to debate and understand the meaning of the message. Will aliens come in peace? That question is perhaps the most difficult to answer.