Fake alien message sent to Earth to prepare us for first contact

A message has been despatched from a spacecraft orbiting Mars again to Earth, to simulate potential communication from a sophisticated alien civilisation.

On 24 Might, a European Area Company (ESA) spacecraft at Mars, the Hint Gasoline Orbiter (TGO), was used to ship a small coded message a couple of kilobytes in measurement to our planet. Picked up by radio receivers on Earth, teams of astronomers and lovers then set to work decoding it, a …