03/13/2021 5:11 PM
Clarín.com
International
Updated 03/13/2021 5:11 PM
The question has been asked many times throughout history:
is there life on other planets?
The unknown remains, of course.
The truth is that in the 1970s, shortly after the arrival of man on the Moon,
NASA
devised a
new mission
with two specific objectives.
The first was to photograph Jupiter and study its atmosphere;
the second, to
send a message to the aliens.
Artist's drawing of the Pioneer 10 probe passing Jupiter.
(Photo: AP)
The name of the ship was
Pioneer 10
.
It was actually an unmanned space probe.
Within it would travel this "interstellar note", which in time would be known as
"The Pioneer Plate"
.
How the idea of sending a message to aliens came about
It was journalist
Eric Burgess
who had the original idea, although he never really thought it would convince the US space agency.
"If there is a chance that we will find
extraterrestrial life
, we should give them a message, like a greeting," he assured them.
What Burguess did not know at the time was that he would have a
very special help
: that of the renowned astronomer
Carl Sagan
, director of the Planetary Studies laboratory at Cornell University, who was his friend.
Astronomer Carl Sagan participated in the message that he would travel on the Pioneer probe.
(Photo: AP)
Sagan hired graphic designer
Frank Drake
and his first wife, artist and writer
Linda Salzman Sagan
, to create a
sketch
to present to NASA.
The illustrations were done on two gold plates.
Technically, they were two gold plates that had to
"summarize" what humans are like
and be ready before the launch of the
Pioneer 10
space probe
- the first to make direct observations and obtain close images of Jupiter - on March 2, 1972 , and its counterpart, the Pioneer 11, on April 5, 1973.
How to choose the message to send
The problem, now, was another: what
message to
put on the plates?
"We imagine that the most interesting thing for aliens would be to
know what we are like
," Drake, founder of the SETI Institute, told the BBC.
"The Pioneer Badge".
(Photo: NASA Ames)
And he detailed: "We think they would also want to know
where the message came from and when it had been sent
, since millions of years could pass before it was intercepted."
With this in mind, they set out to
map
the location of the Earth under the premise that science and mathematics were
universal languages
.
So they devised a scheme using
pulsars
(objects that emit regular pulses of different types of radiation) as
coordinates
within our Solar System.
The team made an interstellar map.
(Photo: NASA Ames)
The map was just one of the messages that would be sent.
In addition,
there were other drawings on the plates
.
Salzman Sagan was in charge of the illustrations, and did a job against the clock.
What were the other
illustrations of
?
From our Solar System, the path of the
Pioneer
, the silhouette of the probe, the figure of a man and another of a woman, the relative position of the Sun to the center of the galaxy and a diagram of the hyperfine transition of the neutral hydrogen, the most abundant element in our universe.
The Neutral Hydrogen Diagram.
(Photo: NASA Ames)
A controversy that was not foreseen
One of the drawings in particular unleashed a great controversy:
that of the body of man and woman
.
"I wanted each figure to have different racial features. The woman has very almond-shaped eyes and straight hair; I did it to the man with curly hair and a flattened nose, so that they would be
multicultural,
" he told the BBC.
The truth is that the
outfit was
a problem.
"How was I going to dress them? In tribal costumes? In haute couture clothes? No, we decided they should go
naked,
" added the artist.
The location of the Earth was detailed using pulsars.
(Photo: NASA Ames)
However, his uncertainty revolved around the
details
he would draw.
"Many of the statues I had been looking at didn't have very specific female genitalia ...
I didn't know what to do,
" Linda recalled.
And he detailed: "There were a few days, I think five, before they would let us put the plate on the spacecraft, and Carl told me:
'Don't do anything that could get us into trouble with NASA
or give anyone an excuse to don't put the badge on the spaceship. '"
The drawings of the man and the woman aroused an unthinkable controversy.
(Photo: NASA Ames)
The result:
Salzman Sagan did not draw female genitalia.
"NASA was very concerned that some members of Congress were very
conservative
and offended that taxpayer money was being used to send obscenities into space," Drake said.
A new problem: Who greeted the aliens?
Another question that Sagan's wife's drawing received was why he greeted the aliens: it
was the man who had his hand raised
, unlike the woman, who had both at her sides.
In Linda Salzman Sagan's illustration, the man was the one waving.
(Photo: NASA Ames)
"
Feminism was
just beginning to be a big topic of conversation and many women said, 'Well, why aren't we waving to the Universe,
why don't we have our hands raised?'
"Salzman Sagan said.
The plate attached to the Pioneer 10 probe. (Photo: NASA Ames)
"The problem was that if they both raised their hands, the aliens were going to think
that all of us on Earth walk with our hands raised
... we had to take those things into account," he explained.
The launch and a great mystery: did the message reach the aliens?
Finally, at 8:42 p.m. on Thursday, March 2, 1972, NASA launched the
Pioneer 10
probe
from Cape Canaveral, Florida (United States).
He did it on a rocket called the
"Atlas Centaur".
The Pioneer 10 probe was launched on Thursday, March 2, 1972. (Illustrative photo: EFE)
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the
asteroid belt
, an achievement considered spectacular by experts.
Then it headed towards Jupiter, a planet it arrived on on December 3, 1973.
The spacecraft was the first to make
direct observations
and obtain close-up images of Jupiter.
In addition, he mapped the intense radiation belts of the gas giant planet, located the
planet's
magnetic field,
and established that it is predominantly a liquid planet.
Pioneer 10 helped determine that Jupiter is predominantly a liquid planet, among other things.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
Ten years later, in 1983, Pioneer 10 became the
first human-made object to
orbit Pluto, the most distant planet from the Sun.
"Pioneer 10 is an
explorer
in the true sense of the word. After it passed near Mars on its long journey in deep space, it ventured to places where
no object built by mankind had ever gone before,
" said the doctor. Colleen Hartman, director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division in Washington.
He added: "It ranks among the most historic as well as the most
scientifically significant
explorations ever undertaken."
Where in the universe is the probe currently?
The spacecraft continued to do valuable research in the outer regions of the solar system until
its science mission ended on March 31, 1997.
NASA received the last message from the Pioneer 10 probe in 2003. (Photo: EFE)
In May 2003, NASA reported that
Pioneer 10's
nuclear power source
had decayed, and could not have enough power to send additional transmissions to Earth.
"After more than 30 years, it appears that the venerable 'Pioneer 10' spacecraft
has sent its last signal to Earth,
" the statement read.
The
last
known of Pioneer 10 corresponds to information released by the US space agency last year.
"Pioneer 10 is heading towards the star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus and it
will take more than two million years to reach it."
Currently the Pioneer 10 probe is heading towards the star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus.
(Photo: NASA Ames)
How far can the probe go, then?
NASA graphed it in an
almost poetic
way
: "Pioneer 10 will continue to travel silently like a
ghost ship
through deep space in
interstellar space
."