by G. Jack Urso
From the Ae13U NASA TV
YouTube Channel.
NASA’s Voyager
spacecraft “Golden Record,” which went to space onboard Voyagers I and II in
1977, is an audio and video collection of sounds, music, photographs, and greetings.
As noted by Carl Sagan, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played
only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space.”
According to the
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
“The contents of
the record 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.”
“Each record is encased in a protective
aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in
symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the
record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form.”
“The remainder
of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per
minute. It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was
spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern
Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an
eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western
classics and a variety of ethnic music. Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the
solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find
themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a
close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted,
"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.”
“The definitive
work about the Voyager record is "Murmurs of Earth" by Executive
Director, Carl Sagan, Technical Director, Frank Drake, Creative Director, Ann
Druyan, Producer, Timothy Ferris, Designer, Jon Lomberg, and Greetings
Organizer, Linda Salzman.”
Please visit the
following NASA links for a complete track list of images, music, sounds, and
greetings on the Voyager Golden Record:
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