ABY.I | Ground Control to Major Tom

Voyager wasn’t the first spacecraft to feature an interstellar message; that honor went to Pioneer 10 in 1972, which had a simple six by nine inch plaque, depicting line drawings of a man and a woman, as well as diagrams of our location in space.

The plan for Voyager’s message was considerably more ambitious. The 12 inch diameter gold record would have 115 images, as well as natural sounds, musical selections, and greetings in 55 languages, for a total run time of two hours.

Each piece was chosen with care, to be as inclusive as possible in the limited space. For example, the photo of Olympic runners was chosen because that one image showed multiple ideas: more than one race of people, human muscles flexing, and an event that is both competitive and entertaining. The committee putting the record together (headed by planetary scientist Dr. Carl Sagan) also wanted to avoid politics and religion. Instead of using a cathedral or temple for an example of a building, they chose the Taj Mahal, which is a secular building instead of a religious one.

When it came to music, the committee again aimed for diversity, including pieces from all over the world, such as a Navajo chant, a Peruvian wedding song, and part of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The only piece of modern music included was Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” which got some objections at first. One of the members of the committee thought that rock’n’roll music was “adolescent,” but Sagan replied that there were a lot of adolescents on Earth, so the piece was included, and ended up being the most iconic piece of the entire project.

The sounds from our world were also varied. From whale calls and crickets, to a jet plane and a thunderstorm, to laughter, a heartbeat, and a baby’s cry, the committee tried to include as many of the sounds of our world as possible.

Continuing the goal of encompassing the planet, the 55 greetings range from the Aramaic (an ancient language from the Middle East) “Peace,” to “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time,” in a Chinese dialect. Carl Sagan’s son Nick, who was six at the time, added a greeting of his own: “Hello from the children of planet Earth.”

The aspirations of the Voyager Golden Record were grand. To condense all of Earthly existence in such a small space, knowing that it couldn’t be received in their lifetimes, perhaps never? Carl Sagan himself summarized it best. “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

You’ll see “hot spots” in the image below that look like shadowed, darker colored shapes. Click on each of the hot spots to see details about the contents of the Golden Record.

(Best in Fullscreen)