35 years after it was launched in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in August 2012. Thus the spacecraft became the first manmade object leaving our solar system. On board are the so-called Voyager Golden Records – records containing visual and audio information, with a user manual on the cover.
The first part of the records contains 116 images that include, besides some diagrams (mathematical quantities, solar system parameters, DNA structure etc.), many photos portraying life on Earth and, as mentioned in the linked Wikipedia article, “care was taken to include not only pictures of humanity, but also of animals, insects, plants and landscapes.” You know, just in case humankind will have destroyed itself by the time the spacecraft will be discovered by extraterrestrials.
You can also find these pictures on Wikipedia, but there you have to click one after another, which makes watching the following videos a more comfortable alternative. 😉
Most images are interesting and beautiful, but about a few others I keep wondering how an intelligent alien creature – if this exists at all – might interpret them. One good example is picture 82 with the description “Licking, eating and drinking”, which is very strange. 😉