Alien civilizations could eavesdrop on our communications with our spacecraft and rovers, according to a new study – and we might be able to find them the same way.

To tell a Mars rover to turn left or an orbiter to change focus, mission scientists have to beam powerful transmissions towards neighboring planets in our Solar System. Of course, the target doesn't 'catch' all of the radio waves sent in its direction, so some of the signal would continue into the cosmos, essentially indefinitely.

Anything in that ever-expanding line of radio waves, according to a new study by scientists at Pennsylvania State University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, would be in a prime position to hear our calls.

"Based on data from the last 20 years, we found that if an extraterrestrial intellige

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