Wednesday, September 5, 2007

NASA's Gold Record

(This is an archived post from our old blog.)





Being a fan of LP records as well as spaceships, I've long been fascinated with the fact that the Voyager spacecraft have LP records on board, complete with instructions on how to play them.

But here's a recent article from the New York Times by Timothy Ferris who produced the LP.

He talks about how the record should last a billion years and how it almost didn't make it on board the spacecraft.

Really fascinating stuff.

(click image to enlarge)



There's Uranium 238 on the surface of the record so that someone, somewhere might be able to figure the age of the record.

Here's the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's official page on the Voyager record.

Jet Propulsion Lab's site also has some of the images that the disk contains.

It's a little eerie to look at the photos since we're sure to be cosmic dust by the time anyone finds the Voyager.

Cool.