NASA's first mission to Mars turns 30, sent 90,000 messages to the Red Planet

It's been 50 years since NASA launched its first successful mission to the Red Planet.  Mariner IV was the first spacecraft to show us how Mars planet really looked like.

As of 3 p.m. EST/2000 GMT, radio telescopes will beam as many as 90,000 names, messages and photos towards Mars.

A U.S. based space funding company named Uwingu organized this event that will send an extraterrestrial hello from Earth to mark NASA's historic Mariner 4 mission.

The event will also raise funds for other space projects since people have to pay from $5 to $99 to send their messages.

The project called "Beam Me to Mars" invited interested space enthusiasts to send digital radio wave transmissions to Mars along with their names and messages. These messages can include pictures.

The effort attracted several celebrities including actor and comedian Seth Green and actor George Takei, who portrayed Mr. Sulu on the television series Star Trek.

"Though no one is on Mars yet to receive the messages, here on Earth people will hear them loud and clear," Uwingu wrote on the project website. Uwingu, pronounced "oo-wing-goo" which means "sky" in Swahili, is a privately owned company that raises money to fund space research and educational outreach projects.

Copies of the messages will also be sent to Congress, NASA headquarters in Washington and the United Nations in New York.

Following Mariner 4, more than 20 spacecrafts have orbited, visited or landed on the surface of Mars. Currently there are 3 orbiters and 2 rovers of NASA working on Mars and one orbiter each from India and European Space Agency.