Just today I stumbled upon something interesting; half scientific experiment, half art, a collaboration between artists, the SETI institute and ESA, they cooked up a simulated alien transmission and used on of ESA’s Mars Orbiters to send it to earth!

I totally missed it, but they are inviting the public to help decipher and interpret the message which can be downloaded at one of the project’s mirrors.

Now that’s what I just did and starting this afternoon I’m gonna give it a try. In a series of postings I’m gonna show I I am approaching it from a programming/cryptanalysis perspective, so stay tuned.

File download in progress…