Voyager

The Voyager Interstellar Records

Here is the cover plate which protects the record on each craft.

This cover will protect the record as the ship hurtles through space for millions, even billions of years . The images on the cover are a visual aid - if aliens do find the ship, this will help them understand how to operate the record player aboard each of the vessels.

The Voyager spacecrafts discovered many new things about the physical nature of our solar system, but it is these records that hold my interest and imagination. They are, without a doubt, the most fabulous time capsules ever conceived. They are billions of miles away careening towards the emptiness of deep space. Long after humans have evolved beyond recognition, or have destroyed themselves, these records will be there for us, indicating a species striving for knowledge and immortality.

Included on each record are greetings of peace, respect and awe to extraterrestrials in 55 earth languages and over 115 images, from nudes to a barn raising scene. Also included are the sounds of earth, from bubbling mud pots to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". What an amazing discovery for an unsuspecting extraterrestrial!

Click on image to enlarge

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The Voyager Interstellar Record is actually two separate discs attached to each of the Voyager spacecrafts. Both spacecraft lifted off from earth in 1977, and before leaving the solar system, sent back incredible images and fascinating discoveries about our own little corner of the universe.

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Spacecraft info, and some of my favorite places in the solar system:

The Deep Space Network supports the Voyager's and other interplanetary spacecraft missions. The electronics and heaters on Voyager can operate on only 400 watts of power, roughly one-fourth the amount used by an average home in the western United States. other Europa

photographed by Voyager 2 in July, 1979. a moon of Jupiter An ice crust, 60 miles deep, may cover the surface Cool patterns caused by ice fractures Io

IO is pronounced ("ee-oh") - or - ("eye-oh") - photographed by Voyager 1,nit is another moon of Jupiter. Bee-utiful reds, whites, and blacks are on the surface of active volcanoes, eyewitnessed by Voyager!

Voyager I

-Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 explored the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn before being tossed out toward deep space by Saturn's gravity.

In May 2005, , NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered the solar system's final frontier, a vast, turbulent expanse where the Sun's influence ends and the solar wind crashes into the thin gas between stars">

-Voyager 1 is the most distant human-created object from Earth.
It was confirmed on December 13, 2010 that Voyager 1 had passed the reach of the radial outward flow of the solar wind, as measured by the Low Energy Charged Particle device. It is suspected that solar wind at this distance turns sideways because of interstellar wind pushing against the heliosphere. Since June 2010, detection of solar wind had been consistently at zero, providing conclusive evidence of the event. On this date, the spacecraft was approximately 116 AU or 10.8 billion miles (17.3 billion kilometers) from the Sun.
Voyager 1's extended mission is expected to continue until about 2025 when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough electric power to operate any of its scientific instruments.

More details here: Vger I on Wiki.

More details here: Vger II on Wiki.

The Voyager Official NASA site