Lionel Hernández of the Europea Space Agency's (ESA's) centre in Ávila said the message went up at exactly 13.40 mainland Spain time, or 12.40 in the UK, on Friday as the award-winning physics expert's ashes were buried in London.
It was sent in the direction of the black hole closest to Earth, known as 1A 0620-00, which is 3,000 light years away, with the exact coordinates indicating its location supplied by the ESA operation centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
The file sent out was a composition created from Hawking's famous synthesised voice and music by the Greek composer behind the Chariots of Fire soundtrack, Vangelis, and took 30 minutes to transmit.
Hernández admitted that the launching of the message was only a symbolic action in reality, since the black hole it was aiming for is around a billion kilometres from Earth and, even travelling at the speed of light, would take thousands of years to reach its destination.
The Cebreros DSA 2 (Deep Space Antenna) is one of only three in the world of its type created by the ESA, along with the one in New Norcia, Australia and Marlargüe, Argentina.
It opened in September 2005 and its antenna measures 35 metres in diameter, and capable of communicating with spaceships on other planets or in orbits a very long way away from Earth.
A DOUBLE transplant of a heart and liver in the same operation has been carried out successfully in Spain, saving the life of a woman who was terminally ill, according to the team at Madrid's Gregorio Marañón...
A 'HOMEMADE' vaccine against Covid-19 is getting closer to being launched, and is effective against all known current strains of the Coronavirus, according to an update on the eagerly-awaited formula this week.
DESPITE the vast majority of the public owning a mobile phone, Spain still has nearly 15,000 telephone boxes in the streets – but their days are numbered.
WET-WIPES wrongly flushed down the toilet are an expensive environmental headache, causing fatbergs and backflowing from drains, ending up in rivers, the sea, and coating beaches – but a team of researchers at Málaga...
