NASA Equipped Probes With a Mixtape Intended For Extraterrestrials!

Back in 1977,40 years ago NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2 into the Solar System equipped the probes with the ‘Golden Record’, intended for any aliens (or future humans as they say) who might end up discovering the recordings which is a compilation of multi lingual greetings from Earth and other Earthly audios recorded to introduce the listener/aliens to the sounds of 20th century humankind. Well, here's the list of the audios as uploaded in Soundcloud knowing that the distant originals meanwhile are drifting through space somewhere.

credit: NASA

Voyager 1 is thought to have passed through the heliosphere at the boundary of our Solar System ,currently heading towards a star called AC +79 3888 – be aware the journey will take it some 40,000 years, it seems like NASA are tired of playing moon earth games. But it is thought that the Voyager 2 is still in the heliosphere.Check their real-time locations here.

In addition to these recordings, the Golden Record also contains musical recordings, but these haven’t been uploaded to Soundcloud. Picks include Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, First Movement, and a number of traditional music from cultures around our planet. Interestingly, the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes The Sun’ was supposed to be included but their record label EMI rejected it.

The Golden Record also contains an introductory statement from then US president Jimmy Carter a 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. He summarized the mixtape as follows

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilisation is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some – perhaps many – may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilisations. If one such civilisation intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilisations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.