By Cathy Burke From Newsmax

Legendary Star Trek adventurer William Shatner sent a special message to NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe Tuesday, declaring: “You are not alone.”

During a news conference from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., Shatner joined a celebration of Voyager’s 40th anniversary from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California – reading a message selected from 30,000 submitted – and chosen by popular vote – 13 billon miles away, Space.com reported.

The star, who played the iconic Captain James Kirk in the original “Star Trek” series and movies, opened the envelope to read the winning message submitted via Twitter by Oliver Jenkins, the outlet reported.

“We offer friendship across the stars. You are not alone,” it stated.

Shatner then had engineer Annabel Kennedy send the post, asking: “Are the hailing frequencies opened?”

“They are ready and set to go,” Kennedy replied.

Over the course of 28 seconds, the message was emitted from a Deep Space Network antenna outside Madrid, Space.com reported. It was expected to reach Voyager 1 in 19 hours.

“What an honor; I am so pleased to be here,” Shatner told the news conference. “It’s a magical place . . . and this is a magical moment. To send a message to Voyager. And once it reaches Voyager, it keeps going, so it’s like an advance man: ‘Voyager coming! Voyager coming!’ To all the little green people out there.”

Space.com noted that since launches in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 have transmitted views of the solar system back to Earth, giving researchers the first close-up looks of Jupiter and Saturn’s planetary systems, plus Uranus and Neptune.

“Four decades ago, in 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft, only a little over eight years after the blast-off to Apollo 11 in 1969,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s deputy administrator, said at the news conference in Washington, Space.com reported.

“In exploration terms, Voyager was and still is, to me and to so many, the Apollo 11 of space science. It’s a mission that changed everything . . .”

According to Space.com, even after NASA loses contact with the Voyager spacecraft, they will continue out into the stars, with the so-called Golden Records — a collection of sights and sounds of life on Earth — aboard the spacecraft expected to last for billions of years.
Image: Star Trek’s Shatner Space Message: ‘You Are Not Alone’ Legendary Star Trek actor William Shatner (Joe Giddens/AP)

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