Cosmic Call


Cosmic Call was the name of two sets of interstellar radio messages that were sent from RT-70 in Yevpatoria, Ukraine in 1999 and 2003 to various nearby stars. The messages were designed with noise-resistant format and characters.
The project was funded by Team Encounter, a Texas-based startup, which went out of business in 2004.
Both transmissions were at ~150 kW, 5.01 GHz.

Message structure

Each Cosmic Call 1 session had the following structure. The Scientific Part was sent three times, and the Public Part was sent once, according to the following arrangement:
where DDM is the, created by Canadian scientists Yvan Dutil and Stéphane Dumas, BM is the Braastad Message, AM is the Arecibo Message, and ESM is the Encounter 2001 Staff Message.
Each Cosmic Call 2 session in 2003 had the following structure:
where DDM2 is modernized DDM, BIG is Bilingual Image Glossary. All but the PP were transmitted at 400 bit/s
The ISR was 263,906 bits; BM, 88,687 bits, AM, 1,679 bits; BIG was 12 binary images 121,301 bits; ESM 24,899 bits. Total = 500,472 bits for 53 minutes. PP was 220 megabytes and sent at a rate of 100,000 bit/s for 11 hours total.

Error in Cosmic Call 1

The DDM incorrectly gave the neutron mass as 1.67392, instead of the known value of 1.67492. This error was corrected in DDM2.

Stars targeted

The messages were sent to the following stars:
NameConstellationDate sentArrival dateMessage
16 Cyg ACygnusMay 24, 1999November 2069Cosmic Call 1
15 SgeSagittaJune 30, 1999February 2057Cosmic Call 1
HD 178428SagittaJune 30, 1999October 2067Cosmic Call 1
Gl 777CygnusJuly 1, 1999April 2051Cosmic Call 1
GJ 49CassiopeiaJuly 6, 2003April 2036Cosmic Call 2
GJ 208OrionJuly 6, 2003August 2040Cosmic Call 2
55 CncCancerJuly 6, 2003May 2044Cosmic Call 2
HD 10307AndromedaJuly 6, 2003September 2044Cosmic Call 2
47 UMaUrsa MajorJuly 6, 2003May 2049Cosmic Call 2