Voyager 2 completes 43 years: Know about NASA's space probe with our message to aliens

In late summer of 1977, NASA launched two probes—Voyr 1 and Voyr 2—as part of a mission to better understand gaseous giants, Jupiter and Saturn. After making some remarkable discoveries and giving astromers some new insights about some of biggest mysteries of our solar system, mission was extended.

Interestingly, Voyr 2 was launched before Voyr 1 due to some technical reasons. Starting its journey on August 20, 1977, Voyr 2 went on to explore ice giants, Neptune and Uranus and to date remains only craft to have visited those outer planets. In fact, a lot of what we kw about outer planets and ir moons is credited to se siblings.

While Voyr 2 was busy ing outer planets, Voyr 1 did something even more significant which gave us a new perspective about our place in universe. In 1990, about 6 billion km away from us, it turned around and snapped a photo of our planet, Earth. This iconic im, kwn as “ Pale Blue Dot” shows our home planet as a tiny outpost of life in an incomprehensibly vast cosmos.

Travelling at a speed of around 55,000 kilometers per hour, y are w longest-operating and most distant craft in history. y have escaped boundaries of Solar System and are w at a distance of over 22 billion km from us.

But Voyr mission was t just about our desire to explore and understand more about our Solar System. Hidden aboard, crafts also houses humanity’s mess in a bottle to anybody and everybody out re — Golden Record.

Golden Record

Golden Record is a 12-inch gold plated copper phograph containing sounds and sights of our planet and its diverse inhabitants. Designed as a gift from Earth to extraterrestrial beings, contents of record were curated by a team led by famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan.

biggest challenge before team was to figure out a way to communicate to a civilization that neir understands our symbols r speaks our langu. Sagan and his associates took almost a year to assemble 115 ims and a variety of natural sounds, such as those me by wind, birds, thunder and animals.

record also has musical selections from different eras and cultures, spoken greetings in 55 ancient and modern langus, including 10 Indian langus -- Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Rajasthani and Kanna.

It also contains electronically encoded ims which includes a woman with a microscope, a mor nursing her baby, an astronaut in , children studying in a classroom. It also includes printed messs from n-US president Jimmy Carter and n-UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

record also has a popular Latin phrase, ‘Per aspera astra’ which means "through hardships to stars" encoded in Morse code.

What’s special about cover?

upper left-hand side of record has a drawing of record and needle it carries along with it. drawing shows correct position of needle to play record from beginning. Around this drawing, re are binary markings which detes time taken by record to complete one rotation is 3.6 seconds.

Alien species won’t be able to understand seconds, minutes and hours. So, we h to devise a new way to express time. This was done using fundamental transition (ground state to first excited state) of Hydrogen atom that is also equal to 0.70 billionths of a second. This time interval is consistent on every planet and star.

lower left-hand corner of cover has some scratches. However, this scratchy looking diagram is actually most interesting part of cover. se scratches actually show ‘dress’ of our planet in Solar System. diagram depicts position of our solar system with respect to 14 pulsar stars. Pulsar stars are essentially 'tomb stones' of massive stars that died. y are fast rotating stars that generate strong detectable electromagnetic beams which can be easily spotted. This is similar to telling direction in an ocean using well-d lighthouses.

Will we eventually lose communication with Voyrs?

Each craft houses a rioisotope rmoelectric generator. This generator produces few watts of electrical power every year as rioactive plutonium inside generator decays. A team of scientists is constantly working to prioritize instruments which will stay on considering diminishing power situation.

At current rate, Voyr siblings are expected to continue operation till 2025 with at least one scientific instrument on. However, y are expected to remain active in Deep Network till 2036.

Will extra-terrestrials life able to understand mess?

As of w, we simply don’t kw eugh about universe to be able to think of extra-terrestrial life. So, we don’t kw wher y exist or t? Even if y do, we are t sure of possibility that Golden Records would reach m. Will y be able to access content of record? Although we have written instructions to access content, still instructions are mostly very technical which even an vanced faring civilization might find difficult to crack. Understanding content is a completely different matter altoger. But our hope lives on, and someday an extra-terrestrial being or an alien will come visiting us using guidance of Golden Records.

Where are y heing?

Voyr 1 is covering 3.5 times distance between Earth and Sun each year and is heing towards Ophiuchus constellation. While Voyr 2 is moving towards Pavo and Sagittarius constellations.

If you are reing this article in month of August 2020 in India and want to kw direction in which Voyr 2 are heing to, just step out of your houses and face towards sky.

Today (August 20) in India, at around 8 pm, look up and face Sourn direction. At about 60 degrees from ground you’ll find Sagittarius. This is where Voyr 2 is heing. You’ll t be able to spot craft in sky but it is right re, functioning as silent ambassors of humanity from Earth to a distant species.

And while you look at it, you can wish Voyr 2 a very happy birthday. Of course, even if your greetings travel at speed of light, y would take 21 hours to reach Voyr 2.

(Written by Srijan Pal Singh. He is an IIM Ahmedab gruate and was visor for Policy and Techlogy to Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, 11th President of India. He co-authored book Reignited along with Dr Kalam and is author of Reignited 2. He is CEO of Kalam Centre.)