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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, www.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 www.romanian-gymnastics.com
 The broadcast for www.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 www.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 www.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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