Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
NASA launched this record into space in 1977. Now, you can own your own copy.
Source: The Washington Post
...
For NASA, compiling a snapshot of the planet’s history on a single record was no easy task — especially given its purpose, which President Jimmy Carter outlined in a statement included on the album: a message from planet Earth.
“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,” Carter’s statement said. “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 civilizations.”
NASA approved the record about six months before the launch of the two Voyager spacecrafts, according to science writer Timothy Ferris, who worked with the team, which was led by astrophysicist Carl Sagan and also included radio astronomer Frank Drake and author Ann Druyan as the project’s creative director.
“The chances of aliens finding the Voyagers in the vast emptiness of space are small — some say infinitesimal — but we took our jobs seriously,” Druyan said in a NASA article. “From the moment when [Sagan] first broached the project to Tim Ferris and me, it felt mythic.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/27/nasa-launched-this-record-into-space-in-1977-now-you-can-own-your-own-copy/?utm_term=.f4a20d4965bd&tid=sm_tw
