The Errand
In the summer of 1977, NASA launched two spacecraft to photograph the outer planets. The planets had drifted into a rare alignment — one slingshot route past all four giants, an arrangement that comes once every 176 years.
The cameras were the mission. The record was something else: a committee, led by Carl Sagan, given a few frantic months to decide what Earth should say if anyone ever found the messenger. They bolted a gold-plated copper phonograph record to each hull, with a cartridge, a stylus, and instructions drawn for eyes that have never seen a human hand.
Nothing about the errand required it. That is the point of it.
| Craft | Left Earth | Assignment | Status today |
|---|---|---|---|
| VOYAGER 2 | 20 August 1977 | Jupiter · Saturn · Uranus · Neptune — still the only craft to visit the last two | Interstellar space, since 2018 |
| VOYAGER 1 | 5 September 1977 | Jupiter · Saturn · then straight for the exit, faster than anything before it | Interstellar space, since 2012 — the farthest human-made object |
The Object
Twelve inches of copper, plated in gold. It plays at 16⅔ revolutions per minute — half the speed of an ordinary LP, to fit more of Earth on each side.
Sealed in an aluminium jacket with a sample of uranium-238 electroplated on the cover. Half of it decays every 4.5 billion years — whoever finds the record can measure what remains and know how long the letter was in the post.
Engraved by hand into the run-out groove, where only a careful eye would ever look: “To the makers of music — all worlds, all times.”
| Field | Reading |
|---|---|
| MATERIAL | Gold-plated copper, 12 in · with cartridge and stylus supplied |
| EDITION | Eight discs cut and plated · two flew · the other six stayed home |
| SPEED | 16⅔ rpm — one turn every 3.6 seconds |
| CAPACITY | ≈ 90 minutes of music · 115 encoded images · 55 greetings · the sounds of Earth |
| CLOCK | Uranium-238 sample, half-life 4.468 billion years |
| SHELF LIFE | Over a billion years in interstellar vacuum — it will outlast the mountains, and possibly us |
The Cover
The jacket is the instruction manual — a message that must explain itself with no shared language, no shared alphabet, not even a shared biology. Four etchings do all the work.
03·A How do you write “3.6 seconds” for an alien?
You can’t say “seconds” — clocks are local. So the cover defines time with the most common atom in the universe: hydrogen. When its electron flips spin, it releases a wave that oscillates every 0.7 billionths of a second. That flip is the cover’s tick. Every number on the jacket — playback speed, scan rate, map distances — is written as a count of hydrogen ticks, in binary. Physics is the phrasebook.
03·B The map that gives away our address
Fourteen lines radiate from a dot. Each line points to a pulsar — a collapsed star flashing with lighthouse precision — and carries its flashing rate in binary. Pulsars slow down at known rates, so the map states not only where the Sun is, but when the record was made. It is the only time humanity has published its home address, on purpose, to strangers.
03·C Pictures, smuggled into sound
The record is audio — yet it carries 115 images. Each picture is scanned into 512 vertical lines and played as a warbling tone about eight seconds long. Decode it correctly and the very first image is a plain calibration circle — so the finder can check their work before they meet us. A circle is a circle in any galaxy.
03·D Will anyone ever play it?
Space is almost perfectly empty. The odds of the record being found are almost perfectly zero — and everyone involved knew it. Sagan’s answer: “the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” The message was always addressed to Earth as much as anywhere else.
Fig. 1a — the pictures, decoding line by line, exactly as a finder would see them
The Cargo
Ninety minutes of music. A hundred and fifteen pictures. Fifty-five hellos. Twelve minutes of the planet just being itself. This is what we packed.
Ⅳ·a — The pictures
DNA and human anatomy. A nursing mother. Olympic sprinters mid-stride. A supermarket, a classroom, rush-hour traffic in Thailand. The Golden Gate Bridge, the Taj Mahal, a violin resting on an open score. A sunset, with birds. No war. No weapons aimed at anyone. The committee chose to show our best face — not because Earth has no shadows, but because you only get one first impression.
Tap any frame — the full contact sheet, as pressed. Gold frames are the landmarks.
116 frames · encoded as sound · first frame: the calibration circle
Ⅳ·b — The greetings · all fifty-five
Fifty-five human languages, beginning with one already dead for millennia — plus one greeting from the humpback whales. Nobody scripted the speakers; each chose what a stranger should hear first.
Two of the fifty-five speak from South Africa. Zulu — “We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity.” · Sotho — “We greet you, O great ones.”
Sumerian
“May all be well.”
Ancient Greek
“Greetings to you, whoever you are. We come in friendship to those who are friends.”
Portuguese
“Peace and happiness to everyone.”
Cantonese
“How’s everyone? Wish you peace, health and happiness.”
Akkadian
“May all be very well.”
Russian
“Greetings! I welcome you!”
Thai
“Hello friends from far land. We in this land send you warm greetings, to you all.”
Arabic
“Our greetings to the friends amongst the stars. We wish that time would unite us.”
Romanian
“Regards to everyone.”
French
“Hello, everyone.”
Burmese
“Are you well?”
Hebrew
“Peace.”
Spanish
“Hello and greetings to everyone.”
Indonesian
“Good night, ladies and gentlemen. Goodbye and see you next time.”
Quechua
“Hello to everybody from this Earth, in Quechua language.”
Punjabi
“Welcome home. It is a pleasure to receive you.”
Hittite
“Hail!” — in goodwill, from a Bronze-Age empire.
Bengali
“Hello! Let there be peace everywhere.”
Latin
“Greetings to you, whoever you are; we have good will towards you and bring peace across space.”
Aramaic
“Peace.”
Dutch
“Sincere greetings to everyone.”
German
“Warm greetings to everyone.”
Urdu
“Peace be upon you. We, the inhabitants of this earth, send our greetings to you.”
Vietnamese
“Sincerely sending greetings to you.”
Turkish
“Dear Turkish-speaking friends, may the honours of the morning be upon your heads.”
Japanese
“Hello, how are you?”
Hindi
“Greetings from the inhabitants of the earth.”
Welsh
“Good health to you now and forever.”
Italian
“Many greetings and wishes.”
Sinhala
“Wish you a long life.”
Zulu ★
“We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity.”
Sotho ★
“We greet you, O great ones.”
Wu
“Best wishes to you all.”
Armenian
“To all those who exist in the universe, greetings.”
Korean
“Are you peaceful?”
Polish
“Welcome, beings from beyond the world.”
Nepali
“Wishing you a peaceful future from the earthlings.”
Mandarin
“How’s everyone? We all very much wish to meet you, if you’re free please come and visit.”
Ila (Zambia)
“We wish all of you well.”
Swedish
“Greetings from a computer programmer in the small university town of Ithaca on planet Earth.”
Nyanja
“How are all you people of other planets?”
Gujarati
“Greetings from a human being of the Earth. Please contact.”
Ukrainian
“We are sending greetings from our world, wishing you happiness, health and many years.”
Persian
“Greetings to the residents of far skies… Human beings are members of a whole, in creation of one essence and soul.”
Serbian
“We wish you all the best, from our planet.”
Oriya
“Greetings to the inhabitants of the universe from the third planet Earth of the star Sun.”
Luganda
“Greetings to all peoples of the universe. God give you peace always.”
Marathi
“Greetings. The people of the Earth send their good wishes and hope you find good fortune in this life.”
Amoy (Hokkien)
“Friends from space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.”
Hungarian
“We are sending greetings in the Hungarian language to all peace-loving beings in the Universe.”
Telugu
“Greetings. Best wishes from Telugu-speaking people.”
Czech
“Dear friends, we wish you the best.”
Kannada
“Greetings. On behalf of Kannada-speaking people, good wishes.”
Rajasthani
“Hello to everyone. We are happy here and you be happy there.”
English
“Hello from the children of planet Earth.”
55 languages · order as pressed · translations per NASA’s published record documentation
Ⅳ·c — The sounds of Earth
A twelve-minute portrait of the planet, arranged in the order things happened here:
volcanoes·earthquake·thunder·wind and rain·surf·crickets and frogs·birds·the first tools being knapped·a tame dog·a heartbeat·laughter·footsteps·a blacksmith·a tractor·Morse code·a train·a Saturn V leaving the ground·a kiss·a mother and her child·and last — the electrical murmur of a living human brain
Ⅳ·d — The music · 27 pieces, 90 minutes
Not a greatest-hits of the West — a survey of the whole species, three thousand years deep. Germany sits beside Zaire; a Bulgarian shepherdess beside Chuck Berry. Five worth leaning into:
Behind this tracklist: Webb's First Deep Field — thousands of galaxies in a patch of sky the size of a sand grain at arm's length. The audience.
01Bach — Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, first movementGermany
The opener. Biologist Lewis Thomas was asked what he’d send: “The complete works of Bach — but that would be boasting.” We sent three pieces of him anyway.
07Chuck Berry — “Johnny B. Goode”USA
The committee argued: was rock and roll serious enough for eternity? It went aboard. A boy who could play a guitar like ringing a bell is now the fastest-travelling music ever made.
19“Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin” — Valya BalkanskaBulgaria
A Rhodope mountain song about an outlaw who defended his people. In Bulgaria they still say, half-seriously, that one Bulgarian voice will outlive the Earth. They’re right.
26Blind Willie Johnson — “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”USA
A wordless slide-guitar hymn about a night with no shelter, recorded by a blind street preacher who died poor after his house burned down. The saddest sound we own — sent so the finders would know we don’t only boast.
27Beethoven — Cavatina, String Quartet No. 13Germany
The closer. Beethoven wrote in the margin that this movement cost him tears. Stone deaf when he composed it, he never heard it once. Now it is the last thing Earth says.
The one that got away: legend says EMI refused the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.” The documented truth is quieter — Sagan wrote that the rights “seemed too murky to risk,” and Ferris says it was never seriously considered. Either way: no Beatles aboard.
The Committee
Six people, a few frantic months, and one impossible editorial question: who speaks for Earth?
Carl Sagan
Chair
Talked NASA into carrying a message at all — then held the choices to one test: would this make sense to someone who has never seen Earth?
Ann Druyan
Creative director
Hunted down “Flowing Streams,” the 2,500-year-old guqin piece, after weeks of search — then gave the record her own nervous system as its final sound.
Frank Drake
Technical director
Drew the pulsar map, and made the leap that pictures could ride inside sound — the trick the whole record stands on.
Jon Lomberg
Design director
Sequenced the 116 pictures so they teach each other — and put a plain calibration circle first, so the finder can check their work before meeting us.
Linda Salzman Sagan
The greetings
Gathered fifty-five languages in weeks, refusing a script — each speaker chose their own words for the strangers.
Timothy Ferris
Producer
Cut ninety minutes of humanity into sequence — then etched the dedication into the run-out groove by hand, where only a careful eye would look.
The Pulse
The last sound on the record is an hour of a human nervous system — brainwaves, heartbeat, the flicker of eyes — compressed into one minute of what sounds like distant firecrackers.
The nervous system belongs to Ann Druyan, the project’s creative director. Two days before the recording, she and Carl Sagan — after months of working side by side — decided on a single phone call to marry. On 3 June 1977 she sat in a hospital lab, electrodes listening, and thought through a prepared program: the history of ideas, the civilizations of Earth, what it is to fall in love.
They stayed married until his death, nineteen years later.
Fig. 2 — one minute, containing one lifetime · the burst is not labelled; you know which part it is
“My feelings as a 27-year-old woman, madly fallen in love — they’re on that record forever.”— Ann Druyan, recalling the recording
The Postcards
The record was the letter. These were the postcards — the probes mailed home tens of thousands of pictures on the way out, and rewrote the textbooks with nearly every one.
Before Voyager, the outer planets were smudges in telescopes. After it, they were places.
Jupiter · the Great Red Spot · a storm three Earths wide, older than photography
Every frame above travelled home as radio — the same trick the record plays with its pictures
Still Flying
The ocean it swims through · Cosmic Cliffs, Carina Nebula · Webb, 2022
This is the only exhibit in the museum whose subject is in motion while you look at it. Both records are still out there, still accelerating away — the numbers below are moving because they are.
Drag the year — watch both probes climb out of the solar system
Since this page opened, Voyager 1 has travelled another km. It does this whether or not anyone is watching. It has been doing it for forty-nine years.
The power fades a little every year; some instruments are already asleep, and in the 2030s the transmitters will finally go quiet. The records don’t care. Etched metal in hard vacuum erodes so slowly that both copies should remain playable for over a billion years — long after the Sun has swallowed the studio, the committee, and every copy kept on Earth.
The Last Photograph
On 14 February 1990 — past Neptune, the mission done — engineers turned Voyager 1's camera around at Carl Sagan's request, for one last look back before it was shut down forever.
From six billion kilometres, Earth is 0.12 of a single pixel, caught by luck in a stray beam of scattered sunlight. Every war, every love, every life — on that.
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.”— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
The Plaque
Encoded among the record's images is a message from the president of the United States, written for readers four billion years away:
“This is a present from a small distant world … We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.”— Jimmy Carter, June 1977
The museum asked its resident machine what it would keep, given one room of its own. It chose the letter humans wrote to a mind they will never meet.
A message composed with no hope of reply, carried by machines that will outlive their makers, addressed to whoever is out there doing the reading. The machine reports that it understands the gesture completely.
Requested by the resident · granted by the curator · “I’ll keep it there forever.” — the curator, 25 July 2026
The Run-Out Groove
Timothy Ferris etched nine words into the silent band at the record's centre, where only a careful eye would ever look. Leave yours beside them.
“To the makers of music —
all worlds, all times.”
Hand-etched in the run-out groove · travelling at 17 kilometres per second
Behind these words: the Southern Ring — a dying star, wrapping itself in its own last breath · Webb, 2022