August 25: The spaceship "Voyager 1" enters interstellar space in 2012. It is the first object built by man that gets through the Solar System with information about the earthling humanity, for if found by other intelligent beings.

Edward C. Stone, former director of NASA JPL, standing in front of a Voyager spacecraft model.

The two spacecraft Pioneer 10 and 11, that preceded the “Voyager 1”, were carrying metal plates that identify the time and place of origin, for the benefit of other space travelers can get to find them in the distant future.

Voyager 1. 

With this example before them, NASA placed 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 recorded on a phonograph record disc 12-inch gold-plated copper, containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is known as the "Golden Record".

Voyager Golden Record.

A committee chaired by the late Dr. Carl Sagan at the University of Cornell and his team gathered 115 images with a variety of natural sounds such as wind, crashing waves, thunder, birds, whales, and other animals.

They additioned musical selections from different cultures and eras; greetings spoken to people on Earth in fifty-five languages; and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. Each record is enclosed in a protective sheath of aluminum, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, indicate how the record is played and explaining the origin of the vessel. The 115 images are encoded in analog form.

Voyager 1 entering heliosheath region.

The rest of the disc is audio, designed to be played at 16-2 / 3 rpm. It contains spoken greetings beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumeria six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect.

Sapce exploration. Message Records, Voyager 1.

After the section on the sounds of Earth, there is a 90-minute selection of eclectic music, including both Eastern and Western classic sounds and a variety of ethnic music.

This is a diagram of the heliosphere, the edge of which is called the heliopause. Most astronomers would say that our solar system is defined by a region in space called the heliosphere, which is a kind of magnetic “bubble” that surrounds the sun. It is produced by cosmic rays that stream from the sun and out into interstellar space. When cosmic rays from interstellar space (often called the “interstellar wind”) collide with the bubble, they are diverted. As a result, few interstellar cosmic rays enter our solar system. The edge of this “bubble” is called the heliopause.

The Great Adventure Continues.

The "Voyager 2" must enter into interstellar space in 2016 and with weak radio signals transmitted through 2015, and then continue their way into infinity if it is not captured by any intelligence or destroyed by accidental intergalactic forces.

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