Venus Used For Radio Signal

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 13

Venus Used For Radio Signal

(N.Z PA. Reuter—Copyright) JODRELL BANK, January 14. Britain and the Soviet Union have carried out the first known communication between two nations using another planet, it was announced yesterday.

A signal from a tracking station deep in the Crimea was bounced off Venus and picked up by a giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank six minutes and 57-million miles later.

The experiment was carried out last Saturday and again on Sunday. The arrangements were made in the summer of 1963 when the director of the Jodrell Bank station, Sir Bernard Lovell, visited the Soviet Union.

Arrangements for the programme had been “extremely complicated—both administratively and technically,” he said yesterday. He was delighted with its success, and as arrangements with Russian scientists were progressing so smoothly, it

was hoped similar experiments would be conducted at regular intervals.

One problem was that the echoed signals from Venus were below the general noise level coming from space and special electronic equipment had to be used to distinguish them. No words were transmitted in the experiment. A spokesman said the signals received were “more like a series of bleeps."