VOYAGER’S GOLDEN RECORD

Knowing that the Voyagers would eventually venture out into interstellar space, NASA decided to include messages from Earth in case they were intercepted by another civilisation in the future. These take the form of old-style LP records, one on each spacecraft, made not from vinyl but gold-plated copper. They include greetings in 55 languages, a selection of natural ‘sounds of Earth’ and 27 music tracks from different cultures.

The records also contain a selection of images, encoded in analogue form, while mathematical symbols inscribed on their covers explain how they are to be played.