What were the scientists doing in the first private project to find extraterrestrial intelligence?
The Phoenix Project was a private research project by the SETI Institute to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The works were carried out from February 1995 to March 2004. The project got its name in honor of the mythological Egyptian bird that rose from its own ashes. In this case, it was a rebirth from the ashes of NASA's HRMS program, which was canceled in 1993.
The rescue
Following the completion of the HRMS, SETI took steps to maintain the core scientific and technical team of the project. The electronics and software were also upgraded. Project Phoenix was at that time the only targeted extraterrestrial intelligence work in progress. His main program included the study of more than 700 Sun-like stars located within 200 light-years from Earth. In the course of the work, frequencies from 1.2 to 3.0 gigahertz were scanned for the presence of narrow-band signals, which would indicate their artificial origin.
Working process
The initial phase of the project ran from November 1993 to June 1995. This included training in instrumentation from NASA's discontinued program. After this work, a five-month observation of 200 sun-like stars was carried out. The Parkes radio telescope located in Australia was used. These observations were the first in which information was processed in real time.
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Following the completion of Australian observations, Phoenix's receiving equipment, known as the Mobile Research Facility (MRF), was shipped to California. There it was upgraded to improve system performance and reliability. Also, the equipment was able to conduct automatic surveillance with little or no operator assistance.
In early September 1996, the observing system was mounted on a 43-meter telescope located in Green Bank, USA. In mid-1998, the instruments were transferred to the Arecibo 305-meter radio telescope.
Scan heaven
The researchers observed each star on the target list for about 1.5 hours. During this time, the multichannel receiver scanned the frequency band from 1.2 to 3 gigahertz in 10 megahertz steps. Each observation took about 5 minutes. During this time, many different signals were detected. Their performance was compared with a database of known terrestrial and orbiting satellite signals.
When all known sources were excluded, there were usually a few left that were analyzed by the FUDD system. In parallel, observations were carried out using the B. Lovell 72-meter telescope located in England. It was equipped with an identical FUDD system. The use of such powerful and far-apart instruments made it possible to quickly and efficiently separate extraterrestrial signals from those that were local or were emitted by satellites in near-earth orbit.
The observation phase of the Phoenix project ended in March 2004.