Dikhyaa Mohanty 
In a first, the Earth has purportedly received an alien signal from Mars, while an ambitious new SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) study is ongoing to find out more about other life forms beyond the Earth. According to a story on India Today, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) flashed an encrypted message to Earth from its orbit around Mars at 9 p.m. on Wednesday to mimic receiving a real communication from an extraterrestrial civilisation. According to the national media outlet, the signal arrived on Earth 16 minutes later.
“Humanity has looked for significance in strong and transformational occurrences throughout history. For all of humanity, receiving communication from an alien civilisation would be a profoundly transformative event, according to Daniela de Paulis, the artist behind the “A Sign in Space” initiative, as quoted by India Today. The Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station in Italy, the Allen Telescope Array in California, and the Very Large Array in New Mexico all picked up the signal that was delivered by the European probe as part of the mission.
“We’re encouraging people and groups to participate in deciphering and interpreting the message’s substance. The technological and cultural substance of the message will be determined by the decoding and interpreting process, according to the project website. Notably, the message was created and encoded by de Paulis and her team, albeit it is not yet public knowledge. People were asked to submit in their interpretation of the message by the initiative.
