To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. 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. 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. 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. Currently, both Voyager probes are sailing adrift in the black sea of interplanetary space, having left our solar system years ago.
They also contain electronic information that an advanced technological civilization could convert into diagrams and photographs.
The 12 inch gold-plated copper discs contain greetings in 60 languages, samples of music from different cultures and eras, and natural and man-made sounds from Earth. Flying aboard Voyagers 1 and 2 are identical "golden" records, carrying the story of Earth far into deep space. The explanatory diagram appears on both the inner and outer surfaces of the cover, as the outer diagram will be eroded in time. This gold aluminum cover was designed to protect the Voyager 1 and 2 "Sounds of Earth" gold-plated records from micrometeorite bombardment, but also serves a double purpose in providing the finder a key to playing the record.