few human artifacts have traveled beyond the earth’s gravity, and even fewer were designed to carry a message to those beyond. compared to the elegance of the messages included with the pioneer and voyager spacecraft, our latest extraterrestrial broadcast seems a little immature. on the other hand, it’s very very small. mark wadsworth and tom elliott built on a rich tradition of chip art by etching the imaging chips sent on the spirit and opportunity rovers (below) with microscopic images of dueling ‘marvin the martian‘s. i only hope that our first cultural export to mars does not offend the locals…
