Voyager Golden Record

NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977, each carrying a phonograph record commonly called the Voyager Golden Record or Sounds of Earth. The records were made from gold-plated copper alloy and mounted in protective covers with a cartridge, needle and symbolic playback instructions. The project was conceived as a message that might be found by an extraterrestrial civilization; discovery and playback were possibilities, not expected outcomes. The disc also serves as a cultural time capsule, reflecting choices made by its human creators.

A committee chaired by astronomer Carl Sagan selected the contents. NASA describes 115 analog-encoded images, greetings spoken in 55 languages, sounds from Earth—including surf, wind, thunder, birds and whales—and music from different cultures and eras. The audio plays at 16⅔ revolutions per minute, and the music section lasts about 90 minutes. The Library of Congress describes the record as a visual and sonic introduction to Earth, while the Smithsonian's account highlights the variety of musical tracks and the inclusion of natural and human-made sounds.

The record's cover carries diagrams intended to explain how to play it and indicate the spacecraft's origin. The images and sounds were selected to communicate information about Earth, life and human culture to a possible finder with no shared language. The collection includes scientific and human elements, but it is selective: it reflects the committee's editorial decisions and the limits of what could be encoded on a single disc. It should therefore be understood as a carefully composed introduction, not a complete or universally representative account of humanity.

The Golden Record joins space exploration with music, image-making and the question of how humans might communicate beyond Earth. Its design and selections have become an enduring subject in discussions of science and culture. The record's meaning does not depend on its being found: its preparation documents how a group of people in the 1970s chose to represent their planet to an imagined audience beyond it.