The Golden Record

Have you ever written a note, stuffed it into a bottle and then flung it out into the ocean? This bottle may spend years adrift at sea. If you’re fortunate enough, it may wash ashore someplace millions of miles away from where you threw it.

Back in 1977, NASA threw a bottle of their own. This time, into the cosmic ocean.

The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, to study the outer Solar System. Although their original mission was to study only the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune.

In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between stars, filled with material ejected by the death of nearby stars millions of years ago. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018

These spacecraft are now exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their more-than-40-year journey since their 1977 launches, they each have travelled more than 15 billion kilometers.

Here is the fun part. The Golden Records are two phonograph records that were included aboard both spacecraft. The phonograph is a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

The contents of the phonograph were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim.

“The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space.” - Carl Sagan

It’s for aliens to see! Let’s hope they’re smart enough to not fling it around like a frisbee.