The Morse Message was a series of brief radio messages in

Morse code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...

that were transmitted from the Evpatoria Planetary Radar (EPR) complex and directed to the planet

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...

in 1962.MIR, LENIN, SSSR
/ref> The message consisted of three words, all encoded in Morse code: the word “Mir” (russian: “Мир”, meaning both “peace” and “world”) was transmitted from the EPR on November 19, 1962, and the words “

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...

” (russian: “Ленин”) and “USSR” (russian: “СССР”, the abbreviation for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

— russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, ''Soyúz Soviétskikh Sotsialistícheskikh Respúblik'') were transmitted on November 24, 1962. In Russian, the Morse Message is referred to as the Radio Message “MIR, LENIN, USSR”. The message was the first radio broadcast intended for extraterrestrial civilizations in the history of mankind. It was also used to test the radar station (though not for measuring the distance to Venus, since the EPR relied on a different technology, a coherent waveform with frequency manipulation, for distance measurements). The signals reflected off the surface of Venus and were received back on Earth 4 minutes, 32.7 seconds and 4 minutes, 44.7 seconds later (for the November 19 and November 24 broadcasts, respectively). The signals are currently in transit to the star HD 131336HD131336
/ref> in the

Libra constellation Libra is a constellation of the zodiac and is located in the Southern celestial hemisphere. Its name is Latin for weighing scales. Its old astronomical symbol is (♎︎). It is fairly faint, with no first magnitude stars, and lies between Vi ...

. The famous star

Gliese 581 Gliese 581 () is a red dwarf star of spectral type M3V at the center of the Gliese 581 planetary system, about 20 light years away from Earth in the Libra constellation. Its estimated mass is about a third of that of the Sun, and it is t ...

, the addressee of the modern interstellar messages

A Message From Earth Gliese 581c (Gl 581c or GJ 581c) is a planet orbiting within the Gliese 581 system. It is the second planet discovered in the system and the third in order from the star. With a mass at least 5.5 times that of the Earth, it is classified as a ...

and

Hello From Earth Active SETI (Active Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) is the attempt to send messages to intelligent extraterrestrial life. Active SETI messages are predominantly sent in the form of radio signals. Physical messages like that of the P ...

, is also located in Libra.

References

{{Reflist 1962 in the Soviet Union Interstellar messages Science and technology in the Soviet Union Space program of the Soviet Union Venus

See also

References