Send your Dorito-y message into space

Leicester (UK) – If you had the chance to send a message into space, what would it be ? People in the UK have an opportunity to get their Doritos-sponsored message sent to 47 Ursae Majoris, which is believed to be supporting living organisms – 42 light years away from Earth.

The space commercial is part of Doritos’ “You Make It, We Play It” user-generated-content campaign in the UK. People are being asked to be creative and shoot a 30 second video ad about what they perceive life on earth to be.

The winning ad will lift off into space on June 12 from a 500 MHz Ultra High Frequency Radar from the EISCAT Space Centre in Svalbard, which lies in the Arctic Ocean about midway between northern Norway and the North Pole. The target is a planetary systems surrounding 47 UMa (Ursae Majoris), a star which is believed “to host a habitable zone that could potentially harbor small terrestrial planets and support life as we know it,” researchers from the University of Leicester said.

Travelling at the speed of light, of course, it will take the commercial 42 years to reach its target area. The ad signal, which is separated into several portions that are encoded in ’1’s and ’0’s each, is estimated to pass the Sun after 4:30 minutes and to leave our solar system after in just under nine minutes. The transmission signal will be boosted with about 2000 million watts of power and could travel for “hundreds of light years,” the researchers said.

In case you are interested to see the message that is sent out into space, Doritos said that the ad will also be broadcast on UK television. The YouTube copy should be available soon after its June 12 debut.

Another form of space advertising, called “moonvertising” is set to see another try this month. Latrobe Brewing company from St. Louis says it will put a logo for its “Rolling Rock” beer on the moon, using a green laser. There are some doubts whether current technology would allow the Rolling Rock logo actually appear on the moon and there are certainly concerns how such a high-powered light beam would interfere with air traffic. We will find out on March 21, when the logo is planned to be displayed on the moon.