Categories: EarthEarth ObservationJuno Mission

How People from Earth said “Hi” to a Passing Spacecraft

This colorized composite shows more than half of Earth’s disk over the coast of Argentina and the South Atlantic Ocean as the Juno probe slingshotted by on Oct. 9, 2013 for a gravity assisted acceleration to Jupiter. The mosaic was assembled from raw images taken by the Junocam imager. Credit: NASA/JPL/SwRI/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Um, something in my eye. This wonderful video details a what took place when the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft swung past Earth on Oct. 9, 2013 for a gravity assist, and amateur radio operators around the world sent a Morse Code saying “HI” to the spacecraft.

“We wanted to know, if this were an interplanetary spacecraft, could they we tell there was intelligent life on Earth?” said Bill Kurth, co-investigator for the Juno Waves Investigation from the University of Iowa.

Watch the video to find out if it worked.

Remove All Ads on Universe Today

Join our Patreon for as little as $3!

Get the ad-free experience for life

“We obviously haven’t heard anything like this from any other planet,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, speaking during a press briefing from the American Geophysical Union conference today in San Fransisco.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/