Voyager Golden Record

The Golden Record cover shown with its extraterrestrial instructions.

The Voyager Golden Records are two phonograph records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record#cite_note-TA-20170630-1)[] The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. The records are a sort of time capsule.

Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.