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Identifier
B0101
Description
The Brandenburg 300 Project Honors The Voyager 2 Project
Jet Propulsion Lab's Voyager Site
The story of both of the Voyager spacecrafts is told earlier in the Chapter “Brandenburg 23 Voyager.” Voyager 2 was actually launched 16 days before Voyager 1, but has taken a longer path to leaving the solar system. Voyager 1 (which passed Pioneer 10 in 1998 to become the most distant human-made object in space) left the solar system in August of 2012. Voyager2 is expected to leave the solar system about 3 years after Voyager 1.
Both carry the Golden Record on which the Brandenburg Concerto is the first music.
The Voyager spacecraft was launched in 1977 and carries on its side a gold record that is humankinds first “time capsule” sent in hopes of encountering and communicating with civilizations on planets other than our own. It embodies the hopes and dreams of the people of our planet, and offers the beauty of its music and art as examples of the best of who we are. The first music on the Golden Record is the Brandenburg Concerto - making it arguably the most important single piece of music ever recorded, and certainly a standard by which all other music can be judged. The version selected was performed by Karl Richter and the Munich Bach Orchestra.
Brandenburg 621 Art Space Music
The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft continue exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. In the 36th year after their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto. Voyager 1 and 2 are now in the "Heliosheath" - the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network (DSN).
The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there -- such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings -- the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond.
Golden Record
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.
The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. 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. 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. Secretary General Waldheim. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music. Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.
The definitive work about the Voyager record is "Murmurs of Earth" by Executive Director, Carl Sagan, Technical Director, Frank Drake, Creative Director, Ann Druyan, Producer, Timothy Ferris, Designer, Jon Lomberg, and Greetings Organizer, Linda Salzman. Basically, this book is the story behind the creation of the record, and includes a full list of everything on the record.
Publication Date
2013
Recommended Citation
"01) Brandenburg 62-1: Voyager 2" (2013). Brandenburg 300 Project. 3.
https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/brandenburg300/3
