Would we ever find an alien space probe?

Several light-years away, an alien species has just discovered Mars. They deem it a candidate for colonization, so they launch a Voyager-like probe to get a closer look. They have no idea that there's life in our solar system; they just want to examine Mars more closely for signs of life and see if there's any more potentially habitable planets in the system.

The probe isn't landing, just flying by Mars and perhaps ending up in a stable orbit around the Sun.

This raises two questions:

• Would we (modern humans) notice this probe? What conditions would have to be met to detect it?
• Would the aliens notice us? Presumably, the aliens would notice some signs of life if they pointed the probe's instruments at Earth, but would they notice our technology?

Assume the aliens have a technology level similar to us, and ignore the problems of getting the probe to our solar system.

posted over 9 years ago

ItsTimmy‭

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