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[July 18] WORLD EXCLUSIVE!
Cape Canaveral, FL, USA
Historic Transmission: Perfect
Ten Broadcast into Space
related stories:
[Nov 12] Nadia
Comaneci receive Birthday Star Present on 45 Anniversary
[Dec 25, 2004] Gymnastics
Stars will now have "their own" Stars
Photo credits:DSCN (transmission), NASA (shuttle)
"Perfect Ten" Video
montage made by Shan Fan, US
Nadia
Comaneci and her amazing Montreal 1976 performance
(she got 10 score, 7 times!) is well known on Earth. Celebrating
The Perfect Ten, romanian-gymnastics.com, the most popular
web site about Romanian gymnastics,
has made this event known and available to the (possible)
celestial civilizations, also.
(click
for broadcasted video)

A
video montage celebrating Perfect Ten, made by Shan
Fan (Heather Gibson, a Romanian
gymnastics fan from Memphis, TN, US), has been broadcast
last night into deep, open space, by the 16-foot-wide (5 meter
wide) TV transmission antenna of Deep
Space Communications Network, (DCN) a private organization
located near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (click
for broadcasted video)
Photo credit:DSCN for romanian-gymnastics.com
The
broadcast for romanian-gymnastics.com has been scheduled 6
months in advance, with an undisclosed fee* paid for the exclusivity
of any (sport related) transmissions for the July 18.
*Individuals, non exclusives, pay only $100
for a 5 mnutes broadcast.
Photo credit:DSCN
Last minute delays in the Space Shuttle Program made the broadcast
uncertain until Monday, when the Perfect Landing of the Space
Shuttle have left the TV broadcast antenna free to be repositioned
and broadcast into Deep Space for us, just few hours later.
(click
for broadcasted video)
With
drag chute deployed, the orbiter Discovery slows to a stop
after landing on Runway 15 at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility,
completing mission STS-121 to the International Space Station.
Discovery traveled 5.3 million miles, landing on orbit 202.
Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
(landing
video here)
The
Transmission
Certificate confirms that the video montage "Perfect
Ten" has been sent into deep space on July 18, at 12:01
AM, just few hours after same antenna has broadcasted another
"Perfect Ten" landing of the space shuttle.
DCN
aims their antenna at coordinates where there are no known
satellites, and they estimate that their transmissions will
travel approximately 1-3 light years. "Perfect
Ten" message will travel trillions of miles beyond
the Solar System. "The biggest things is that we hit
clear space, said Jim Lewis, Vice President of Deep
Space Communications Network.
Photo credit:DSCN for romanian-gymnastics.com
According to CCI Vice President and Managing Director
of DSCN, Jim Lewis, “When we set up Deep Space Communications,
we hoped to send examples of the best and the brightest into
outer space. Nadia’s accomplishment obviously fits that bill.”
“We can only continue to send messages and hope someone or
something sees them and understands we have something valuable
to offer the universe,” concluded Lewis. “The way we see it,
if there is someone out there receiving radio waves from this
planet, Earth is getting some bad press. Basically, they’re
seeing what we’re seeing on the evening news: war, famine,
strife and struggle. Perhaps now they will see there is also
unmatched beauty and grace on our little green ball as well.”
Deep Space Communications Network is a private organization
located right next the Kennedy Space Center. DSCN was formed
specifically to communicate with outer-space by a group of
broadcast engineers and communications experts that regularly
transmit from the space center.
The company is an offshoot of Communications Concepts, Inc.,
a company based in Cape Canaveral, Florida,
that produces live television coverage of shuttle launches.
That same equipment has being used to send the romanian-gymnastics.com
scheduled broadcast into open space to any intergalactic neighbors
that might be listening.
Photo credit:DSCN
Previous commercials broadcast into deep space include: Audi
engine photos, Space
Show (popular US program), classifieds postings from Craigslist.com,
Music Album "Sentimental Junk" of Black Eyed Soul
and broadcasting whale sounds for an environmental program.
(Details)
Opinions after last years first commercials transmissions:
Matt, Robesonia, Pa.: "It kind of gives you a sense of immortality
knowing that your image or words are just out there in space
for anyone to pick up. And on the odd chance that aliens would
pick it up in, like, 3 million years from now, you'll always
be known as a part of the ancient race of earthlings in some
alien schoolbook."
Since humans first gazed at the stars, they have wondered
if there is someone or something out there. Are we alone?
The topic of extraterrestrial life continues to be one of
the most fascinating enigmas of all science. Governments and
Universities have spent millions of dollars pinging the universe
to try to find and contact other life forms beyond our earth.
You have most likely seen the giant antennas and radio telescopes,
such as the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico that was featured
in the James Bond Movie “Golden Eye” and the Parkes Telescope
in New South Wales, Australia featured in the movie “Dish”
that look out into interplanetary and deep space for answers.
Commercial messages have long been transmitted into space,
inadvertently since the first radio and television signals
were generated, but the Deep Space Communications Network
joins a short list of intentional transmissions aimed at contacting
someone -- anyone -- out in the Universe.
In fact, there is a precedent for speaking to ET. In the 1970s,
plaques and records were affixed to four NASA spacecraft in
case they were ever found by cosmic beings. These cards bore
pictures of humans, music, and some simple facts about our
planet.
In 1974 scientists made their first attempt to communicate
with any intelligent life out there. Their brief message,
beamed from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico towards
the Messier 13 globular cluster 25,000 light-years away, contained
information on our basic numbering system, the atomic numbers
of key elements, chemical formulas of the four DNA building
blocks, the average human height, and the Earth's population;
it also portrayed a double-helix, a human being, and our location
in the solar system.
Three years later, the "Golden Records" carried aboard the
Voyager 1 and 2 space probes showed our solar system's location
relative to fourteen pulsars, and included images and sounds
of life on Earth, plus spoken greetings in 55 languages and
a recorded message from then-president Jimmy Carter: "This
is a present from a small and distant world ... We are attempting
to survive our time so that we may live into yours. We hope
someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community
of galactic civilizations."
In 1999 and 2003, a more elaborate set of messages known collectively
as the Cosmic Call was sent out from a radio telescope in
the Ukraine to nearby star systems deemed likely to harbor
life. In 2001, another message, composed by Russian teens
and called the Teenage Message to the Stars, was also transmitted
from the Ukraine radio telescope.
Nonetheless,
and despite the semi-surreal nature of this particular effort,
the idea of how we might speak to extraterrestrial, and what
to say, has been considered by scientists and sociologists.
After all, serious experiments using specialized telescopes
are under way to eavesdrop on any alien transmissions. If
these experiments bear fruit, there would be a strong temptation
to respond.
Jim
Lewis, (Vice President of Deep
Space Communications Network) Runs a traditional TV production
house and found a creative way to make use of his satellite
truck during off-peak hours. He doesn't think his attempt
to contact alien life is any more ridiculous than the long-running
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project that
uses arrays of radiotelescopes to scour the heavens. "If you
think about the fact that we have people here on Earth monitoring
24 hours a day, listening for transmissions back to Earth
from extraterrestrial, I think the chances are probably quite
good that the aliens will pick this up," Lewis explained.
Many, many thanks to DSN & NASA for helping us at this
Project and for keeping the absolute secret for so many months.
related stories:
[Nov 12] Nadia
Comaneci receive Birthday Star Present on 45 Anniversary
[Dec 25, 2004] Gymnastics
Stars will now have "their own" Stars
Related stories on US media:
Dees
Space Program (scroll down for previous video news reports)
The Guradian story: Lost
for words in space
Romanian Gymnastics News Archive.
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