THE GOLDEN RECORDS OF HUMANITY Elfreda Harvey, LVI
On 5 September 1977, NASA launched two spacecrafts – Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 – on a planetary grand tour. Their purpose was to study our neighbouring planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, yet their initial plan was only to fly to Jupiter and Saturn.
The mission was time-critical as they were assisted by the gravitational pull of the planets which were in the optimal layout in our solar system. With the planets aligned, which only takes place roughly once every 175 years, the planets’ gravitational pulls would act as a slingshot, allowing the spacecraft to gain orbital speed, covering a much greater distance. Consequently, the crafts did not require as much fuel which meant they could carry more scientific instruments.
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To this day, the two voyagers are the farthest human-made objects to have travelled from Earth. Voyager 1 was the first to reach interstellar space and scientists believe that it will reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud in 300 years. Voyager 1 is about 23.29 billion km (14.47 billion miles) away from Earth and travelling at 61,030 km/h (37,922 mph). Since their launch, the Voyagers have sent home some of the most breath-taking images of our planetary neighbours. This includes the famous pale blue dot image in which Earth is barely a pixel against the stellar glow of the sun. The spacecraft are equipped with instruments to measure cosmic rays, plasma waves, magnetic fields and other data. Four decades after their launch, the Voyagers still communicate with us, breaking the initial prediction of the mission only lasting five years. However, due to its incredibly immense distance from Earth, radio signals take more than fifteen hours to reach Earth. Such longevity comes at a cost, the cameras onboard the space crafts have been turned off and less than half of the instruments are still functioning. Those working are being continuously reprogrammed to extend their performance, but NASA expects radio communications to cease completely by 2025. By then, the instruments will fail to produce sufficient heat to keep them at a stable temperature against the extremes of outer space. The machines will become too cold and
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the signals too weak, so everything will gradually stop working. The Voyager missions were unique in their ambition and scale yet one can realise that similar missions as grand as these have been made in the past. For example, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, launched in 1973, paved the way for the Voyager missions. Yet, what made the Voyager mission even more special was a record placed onboard the spacecrafts. The record, designed by Carl Sagan, Frank Drake and Linda Salzman, was made to expand the human sphere, make contact with extra-terrestrials and welcome a new partnership with mankind. The record is made of a phonograph record which at the time was the most advanced method of coding. Although these only had a runtime of 30 minutes, it felt impossible for the creators to represent humanity in only that short amount of time. Luckily, solutions were engineered, and the phonograph was able to have a runtime of 90 minutes. With what we know, we don’t share the same languages with our interstellar friends, nor life experiences. Yet, what we can share are facts of reality, from physics, chemistry, and mathematics. These became the guiding principles of the record.
