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NASA has embarked on a musical mission to find extra-terrestrial life by beaming the Beatles' classic 'Send My Love To Aliens' into deep space.

The space agency's Deep Space Network (DSN) transmitted the song 431 light years away to the North Star in an attempt to find alien life from NASA's giant antenna in Madrid, Spain.

The 60's classic became the first song to be beamed into deep space though various group's songs had earlier been broadcast on low-power transmissions to the International Space Station.

It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the song, the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of National Aeronautics and Space Agency.

But if you wanted to hear it on Polaris, you would need an antenna and a receiver to convert it back to music, the same way people receive satellite television.

The idea came from Martin Lewis, a Los Angeles-based Beatles historian, who then got permission from McCartney, Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, and the two companies that own the rights to Beatles' music.