The IEEC collaborates in the competition ‘Telegram to a Planet’, in which students will try to establish contact with an exoplanet
The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC — Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya) is collaborating in the organisation of the competition ‘Telegram to a Planet’, which proposes to students from all over Spain (from Secondary Education to High School and Vocational Training) the challenge of composing a graphic message (or pictogram) to establish a first contact with a possible alien civilisation on the potentially habitable planet Teegarden b, located 12.5 light-years away from the Solar System.
The winning message of the contest will be sent to the planet using the antennas of the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) located at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) of the European Space Agency (ESA), located in Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid. The content of the winning message, as well as the procedure for sending it, will be the subject of a documentary made by TV3.
The pictograms presented (of 73 x 73 pixels) will have to meet a number of specified requirements and will be assessed by a committee of representatives of all the collaborating entities. These are, in addition to the IEEC: the Observatori Astronòmic de la Universitat de València (OAUV); the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB); TV3 – Televisió de Catalunya and the educational programme Cooperation through Education in Science and Astronomy Research (CESAR), developed by ESA, INTA and Ingeniería de Sistemas para la Defensa de España (ISDEFE).
The competition aims to make students think about the implications of a first contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation and help spread among the educational community the foundations, methodology and milestones of the famous Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme, which began to track space by searching for transmissions from extraterrestrial civilisations in the 1960s.
Schools can register until 29 September by filling in this form. Proposals or queries can be sent to teleplaneta@uv.es until 31 October.