Cosmic 'Message In A Bottle' Sent Into Space

A disc engraved with chapters from the Bible in 1,000 languages has been sent into space attached to the outside of the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft at the start of its mission of cometary exploration.

It is designed to be a relic of the earth's languages.The space mission is named after the famous Rosetta Stone, carved with inscriptions in Egyptian and Greek, which was found by a French soldier in Egypt in 1799.

The engraved words have been produced by the Rosetta Project of the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, USA.

The organisation is trying to save the world's languages and fears that many will die out within the next century. It is currently working to build a publicly accessible digital library of human languages.

Following its launch in 2003, Rosetta is still in orbit today, sending back images of asteroids, and has a planned lifetime of about 12 years.

Read more about the Rosetta mission and find out more about the Rosetta Project>>