Invitation to ETI: Alexander Zaitsev

Who We Are: Alexander Zaitsev

Dr. Alexander Zaitsev is a Chief Scientist of the Radio Engineering and Electronics Institute, Russian Academy of Science. His career has been marked by three major areas of interest: First, radar devices used in the study of Venus, Mars, and Mercury, particularly direct digital synthesizers of coherent radar signals (the subject of his M.S. thesis, 1981). Second, near-Earth asteroid radar research (the subject of his Ph.D.dissertation, 1997). Dr. Professor Zaitsev has been able to successfully conduct international radar astronomy research projects with Europe, the United States and Japan. In 1992, he led a team of radar astronomers who successfully tracked the asteroid 4179 Tautatis to a distance of 3.6 million kilometers from Earth. This was the first non-U.S. asteroid radar experiment. Third - interstellar radio messaging (at present). He supervised the transmission of the 1999 and 2003 Cosmic Calls from Ukraine. In addition, under his leadership, a youth group in Moscow composed and broadcast a very moving Teen Age Message to ETI, including a beautiful "Theremin Concert for Aliens." A pioneer in active SETI, he coined the acronym METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), and dialogs extensively with both proponents and critics of this admittedly controversial activity. In 1985, Zaitsev received the Soviet Governmental Prize in Science. In 1980 he received the Koroliov Gold Medal of the Soviet Space Federation. In 1994 he received the Tsiolkovski Gold Medal of the Russian Space Federation. In 1995 the International Astronomical Union named the asteroid number 6075 as "Zajtsev."

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