Page 56 - Astronomy - October 2017 USA

HOW AN INTERPLANETARY

Voyager 1 and 2 revealed much about the cosmos — and left a giant mark on pop culture.

story of Voyager while visiting the Arecibo
Observatory in Puerto Rico. He starts the
episode, “On August 20 and September 5,
1977, two spacecraft were launched from
the Kennedy Space Flight Center, Florida.
They were called Voyager. Each one carries
a message. A gold-plated record depicting
images, music, and sounds of our planet,
arranged so that it may be understood if
The once-in-more-than-a-lifetime mis- “The main thing people reference when ever intercepted by a technologically mature
sion was born from a rare alignment of the they talk about Voyager in the media is extraterrestrial civilization.”
planets that happens only every 167 years. Star Trek,” says Dodd. “V’ger, V’ger, they Mulder is searching (as always) for evi-
With the right amount of planning and always say.” dence of extraterrestrial life, and the Golden
engineering, NASA realized it could send When NASA designed Voyager, they Record containing a message from Earth,
not just one, but two identical spacecraft on knew that someday it would leave the solar calling attention to our own existence, is a
a journey from Earth to visit the four giant system entirely and might be visible to alien fitting parallel to his journey. In the epi-
planets in the outer solar system. civilizations — if there were any out there sode, a classical music selection from the
At the time of their flybys, both craft to intercept it. In Star Trek, the fictional Golden Record plays while Mulder has a
brought incredible clarity to Jupiter and Voyager 6 has encountered a sentient bizarre alien encounter in Arecibo.
Saturn and their moons, which had previ- artificially intelligent species that gave The Golden Record in and of itself is a
ously been visited by Pioneers 10 and 11 the spacecraft the gift of self-awareness. By vessel for a mixture of popular culture and
and their more primitive cameras. At the the time the crew of the Enterprise meet general documentation of what it’s like to be
time the Voyagers launched, there were no V’ger 6, it’s likely the craft had encountered an earthling. There were musical selections
close-up images of Uranus and Neptune; several civilizations. from the likes of Chuck Berry and
two of our outermost planets were myster- After the discovery of the parked Beethoven; rights management prevented
ies. The world waited for the spacecraft to spacecraft, Spock decides to venture inside “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles from
fly past each planet and send back whatever and find out more about what exactly V’ger being placed on the record. (The Fab Four
treasures they found. Glimpses of the light is. As he’s flying through the ship, he says, were in favor of the move; their record label,
teal of Uranus, the bright blue of Neptune, “Curious. I’m seeing images of planets, which owned the rights to the recording,
and those textured rings of Saturn infil- moons, stars, whole galaxies all stored was not.) The record also contained 116
trated the nightly news and the collective here, recorded. It could be a representation photos and images of scientific concepts
consciousness. of V’ger’s entire journey. But who or what and daily life worldwide; a “hello” in 55 lan-
“At the time, the mission was all over the are we dealing with?” What Spock is guages; a recording of human brainwaves;
news,” explains Voyager Project Manager seeing is a recorded database of V’ger’s various sounds of our planet, both human
Suzy Dodd. “In those days, the press came encounters. Before the missions had even and geologic; and countless other time-cap-
in person, and we would have these live reached Saturn, people were already look- sule sights and sounds. Etchings of Earth’s
press conferences every day from JPL.” ing to Voyager as our future interstellar position, guided by the position of local
Each week, people watching the news emissary. pulsars, were included on the outer cover.
would see the planets grow in size as each In perhaps the perfect blending of real Carl Sagan, who was a member of the
spacecraft got closer, and the public fol- life and science fiction, Star Trek’s Voyager Voyager imaging team at the time, found
lowed loyally along with the mission. 6 encounter is what scientists had the right colleagues to work on the record.
Earthlings suddenly knew more about dreamed of when they launched Voyager Jon Lomberg, an astronomical artist, chose
their home solar system, and that 1 and 2 into space. the images. Linda Saltzman-Sagan, a writer
excitement bled into popular culture, and artist, compiled the language greetings;
especially science fiction. Just two years Ann Druyan, an artist, handled the every-
after the launch of the Voyagers, Star Trek: Star Trek wasn’t the only sci-fi hit to jump day sounds; Rolling Stone editor Timothy
The Motion Picture was released, featuring on the Voyager bandwagon. In a 1994 epi- Ferris lent his particular support on the
a familiar spacecraft. In the film, they sode of The X-Files titled “Little Green musical selections; and SETI founder Frank
called it “V’ger.” Men,” FBI agent Fox Mulder narrates the Drake lent to the project his vast knowledge

56 ASTRONOMY • OCTOBER 2017