Rugby radio enthusiasts mark 100 years since site sent messages to Mars with transmission to the Red Planet
Radio enthusiasts in Rugby continue to mark 100 years since a message was first sent from the area’s historic radio station to Mars by replicating it and transmitting it to the Red Planet.
Members of the Rugby Amateur Transmitting Society (RATS) transmitted broadcast the message from their club house near to Houlton - once home to the world-famous Rugby Radio Station and now a thriving community - to Mars on Saturday, October 24th.
The transmission, sent in Morse code, replicated a greeting sent from Earth to Mars 100 years ago, along with the addition of an introductory message explaining the reason for it.
That reason was to mark 100 years since Rugby Radio Station opened for service - changing worldwide communications forever. Home to the world’s most powerful radio transmitter, it was capable of transmitting telegrams to ships anywhere in the world and transmitted official news broadcasts from the heart of England to every far corner of the globe.
It marked a new era of communication, with people able to send private telegrams to friends and family anywhere in the world. That era included the transmission of several messages to Mars, including one sent on 27th October 1926 from Dr Hugh Mansfield, a London lawyer who claimed to be in telepathic and radio contact with a six-foot Martian woman called Oomaruru.
At the time, there were no responses - and RATS said that while their latest efforts to contact Mars had received some answers, they weren’t actually from the Red Planet.
Despite that, the transmission was one of many celebrations of 100 years of Rugby Radio Station, with more to come as the site marks 100 years since the first transatlantic broadcast to Houlton in Maine, set for January 2027.
Rugby Radio Station was decommissioned in 2002 and the former Grade II-listed building has now been transformed into the award-winning Houlton School campus, but its historical significance lives on thanks to an array of reminders put in place by Urban&Civic, the master developer behind the community in Houlton.
Elly Lazzari Hemus, Community Development Lead at Urban&Civic, said: “This has been a huge year for Houlton and the wider Rugby area as we mark 100 years of Rugby Radio Station, and it’s been brilliant to have so many members of our local community embrace these celebrations and the significance of the site. It may have been decommissioned but at Urban&Civic we’ve always been keen that its historic value lives on and that the people who now call Houlton home are aware of how important it is in British, and worldwide history.
“We started 2026 with RATS transmitting from a special transmitter set up to mark the centenary, and now they’ve also replicated what was a big moment for the site when messages were sent to Mars. None of us are stopping here, with plans to mark 100 years since the first transatlantic telephony call to Houlton in Maine already underway. We can’t wait to mark this huge moment and get everybody in our community involved.”
Rugby Amateur Transmitting Society’s Steve Jones said: “We made several message transmissions in morse code, on the frequency of 14.011Mhz. The beam antenna was pointing towards Mars. The first message (sent at 11:40) was explaining the reason for the transmission, and the second saying ‘Greetings from Earth to Mars’. The message was transmitted three times over a 20-minute period.
“Whilst there were several stations who tried to come back to me immediately following transmission, I knew that they could not be from Mars. The outgoing message takes 7 minutes to reach Mars, and also 7 minutes to receive a reply. Totalling 14 minutes. Transmissions to Mars take between 3-22 minutes, depending on where Mars is (on its orbital cycle) relative to the Earth.”
The transmissions are just part of a series of celebrations of 100 years of Rugby Radio Station, with more to come. To find out more about Rugby Radio Station’s history, visit https://rugbyradiostation.co.uk/