Competition Terms and Conditions

Country of record authors.

_{Credit Vesmír}

Duration of Competition

First round of this competition (uploading of recordings) has no geographical restrictions and will run from 19th March 2019, 19:00 CET until 20th May 2019, 24:00 CEST.

The second round (picking up the sound that will be broadcast from Mars) begins when the jury selected 11 final sounds and ends with the landing of the ExoMars spacecraft on Mars (in 2023).

Competition organisers

The organisers of the competition are the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, established on 1^st January 1964 and transformed into a public research institution by Act no. 341/2005 Coll., with its registered office at Boční II/1401, 141 31 Praha 4, IČ: 68378289 and the natural sciences magazine Vesmír, founded in 1871, registered in the Commercial Register administered by the Municipal Court in Prague, Section C, Entry 2143, with its registered office at Na Florenci 3, 111 21 Praha 1, IČ: 16191986 (hereafter referred to as ‘the Organiser’).

Competition entrants

Entrants are all those who during the course of the competition send the Organiser an audio recording of a maximum length of 30 seconds (preferred formats mp3, mp4, wav - 44,1-48 kHz, 16 bit) and no larger than 10 MB using the online form at mars.vesmir.cz.

By entering the competition, entrants agree to the terms and conditions of the competition and thus undertake to adhere to them. In the event that their recording is chosen, entrants agree to their recording being deposited in the ExoMars probe memory, sent to the surface of the planet Mars and transmitted back to Earth using the probe’s scientific infrastructure. For this purpose, by sending in their recording, entrants give their consent for anyone to use the recording and all accompanying texts thereafter in accordance with licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Recording

A recording is understood to be any vocal, musical or sound recording, provided it is the entrant’s own work and does not in any way infringe on the rights of third parties (unauthorised use of intellectual property, an existing brand or registered trademark).

In the event that the recording is not original (i.e., that the entrant is not the author of the recording) or that it infringes on the rights of third parties in any other way, the recording shall be disqualified from the competition.

In the event of identical entries, the entry received first by the Organiser will be considered valid.

Competition stages and the judging of entries

After submitting their recording into the system, entrants shall receive an e-mail, upon the confirmation of which the recording shall be placed on the Competition website.

Anyone can vote for a recording at mars.vesmir.cz and thus increase its chances of being chosen. The owner of an e-mail address may only vote for any one recording once.

The Organiser shall choose 11 winning entries from all the recordings which meet the competition terms and conditions by the end of the competition. The winning entries shall be entered into the memory of the electromagnetic wave analyser on board the landing platform of the ExoMars rover. Criteria used to judge entries shall include the comprehensibility of the message, its significance, inventiveness and originality.

The competition entries will be judged immediately after the end of the Competition. Results will be announced no later than 30 days after the end of the Competition. The Organiser will then announce all the winning entries at mars.vesmir.cz with the option of choosing the recording which will subsequently be transmitted back to Earth from Mars.

All winning messages will be entered into the ExoMars probe memory and will also be made available at mars.vesmir.cz. The Organiser will notify the authors of the winning entries within an adequate period and will inform them of the next stages of the ExoMars project. 

From Mars on Earth, we broadcast a recording that receives the largest number of voices until the ExoMars probe lands on Mars.

Members of the Jury

Eva Zažímalová – a plant molecular biologist working in a field of metabolism and molecular mechanisms in plant cells. She currently serves as President of the Czech Academy of Sciences comprising 54 public research institutions that conduct research across a broad spectrum of the natural, technical and social sciences and the humanities.

David Parker – Director of Human and Robotic Exploration of the European Space Agency. He is responsible for Europe's participation in the development of human spaceflight infrastructure (such as the International Space Station), as well as for Europe's participation in the exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Anatoly Petrukovich – works in the field of space plasma physics and serves as Director of the Space Research Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences. The Space Research Institute is responsible for part of the scientific instrumentation of the ExoMars programme and coordinates instruments for the ExoMars 2020 surface platform.

Mark McCaughrean – Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency. He is responsible for communicating results from ESA’s missions to the scientific community and wider general public.

Simon Mawer – biologist and writer. His first novel, Chimera (1989), won the McKitterick Prize. His novel Mendel's Dwarf (1997) established him as a world-known writer. He won the Walter Scott Prize in 2016 for his Tightrope novel (2015) and, most recently, he wrote Prague Spring (2018) about the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Jorge L. Vago – ExoMars mission Project Scientist working at ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands. He is the interface for the investigator communities interested in the ExoMars Programme, as well as for other European activities embedded in the international Mars exploration context.

François Raulin – Professor of chemistry and exobiology at Université Paris Est Créteil. His research activities aim at understanding of organic chemistry in extra-terrestrial environments (Titan, giant planets, comets and Mars). He is a Co-Principal Investigator of the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer for the ExoMars 2020 rover.

Ondřej Santolík – Head of the Department of Space Physics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and Principal Investigator of the Wave Analyzer Module for the Martian ground electromagnetic tool instrument onboard the ExoMars Surface platform.

Other provisions

The Competiton is not open to the Organiser’s employees, co-workers directly involved in the Competition, or their family members.

The Organiser reserves the right to disqualify those recordings of the spoken word whose audio recording does not correspond to the written text in the mother tongue and English. The Organiser will also disqualify any recordings which do not conform to moral standards or the laws of the Czech Republic.

Furthermore, the Organiser reserves the right not to choose a Competition winner. In the event that no Competition winner is chosen, no recordings shall be entered into the memory of the ExoMars probe.

The Organiser reserves the right to cut short, postpone, extend, suspend or withdraw the Competition, or to unilaterally change or add to the rules without any right to compensation.

Personal data protection

By submitting your personal data to Vesmír, s. r. o., IČO: 16191986, with its registered office at: Na Florenci 1420/3, 110 00 Praha 1, as the administrator of personal data (hereafter referred to as the ‘data administrator’), pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and Council and Act no. 101/2000 Coll., on the Protection of Personal Data, as amended, you consent to the use of your personal data (name and surname, e-mail address for correspondence related to Competition results, and your country of residence for the purpose of Competition statistics.

We are required to retain this data for a period of 10 years. We do not process this data further in any way, nor do we pass it on to third parties. Your personal data is kept in a secure database.

You can withdraw this consent at any time at mars@vesmir.cz or by writing to Vesmír, s. r. o., Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Praha 1, Česká republika, EU. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the right to retain the data for the period defined by law.

The provision of personal data is voluntary.