THE STORY OF THE GOLDEN RECORD
On September 5th 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched into interstellar space. Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan and a team of NASA researchers sent with it a remarkable testament to our planet: the Golden Record. The project itself was born from love. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan fell deeply in love with one another while compiling the recordings. The Golden Record represents a love for our home, a love for exploration, a love for an ideal that transcends these two people, a love that lives in the hearts of all of us, sending it out into the stars.
The Golden Record aboard Voyager 1 is among the greatest artistic achievements of our species. The record, poured in bronze and coated in gold to withstand the unimaginable harshness of space, is the ultimate mixtape. Our species’ message in a bottle, a great compilation of recordings from around our planet. It is a hello from the children of Planet Earth. A mythic challenge; the spacecraft would lift off and travel at an average speed of 35,000mph into the great abyss of the interstellar space. It carries the greetings from the 59 most utilized languages, the songs of humpback whales, of thunderstorms, of Mozart’s Queen of the Night and… a map of how to find us.
It was a call out into the abyss that we are here. That we want to be citizens of the cosmos. That we want others to know about us. It was a chance to tell what life was like on Earth to beings across the universe.
The following is the opening message on the GOLDEN RECORD aboard the VOYAGER 1 Spacecraft:
“As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organization of the 147 member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth. I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of the immense universe that surrounds us and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.”
- Kurt Waldheim, Secretary General of the United Nations (1972-1981)