Prompt Cast
NASA's Voyager Mission: A Journey to the Outer Planets and Beyond
TLDR NASA's Voyager mission aimed to explore the outer planets of the solar system and included a 12-inch Golden Record containing information about Earth, including music, greetings in different languages, and images. Voyager 2, with limited power and outdated technology, continues to transmit data at a slow rate and is expected to become a permanent time capsule in about 10 years.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
NASA sent robotic probes on a mission to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and decided to include a 12-inch disk called the Golden Record that encapsulated the entire human experience.
02:06
NASA's Voyager mission, which aimed to visit the outer planets in the solar system, became humanity's greatest space mission and allowed for a single trip to all four gas giants using gravitational assists.
03:49
The Voyager program aimed to send probes to the outer planets and beyond, and astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Frank Drake decided to attach a 12-inch analog record containing extensive information about Earth to the Voyager 1 and 2 probes.
05:18
The team had to make decisions about what music and spoken greetings to include on the record, resulting in 90 minutes of music from various genres and greetings in 55 different languages.
06:45
The Golden Record included greetings in various languages, random sounds from Earth, 115 images, and was made of copper plated in gold, with a case made of aluminum and an etching showing how to play the record, as well as a layer of uranium-238 to serve as a clock for determining the launch date.
08:15
The short inscription on the inner circle of the Golden Record almost caused the entire project to be scrapped, but it was eventually included because it was the only example of human handwriting to be sent on the probes.
09:52
Voyager 2, with its diminishing power and outdated technology, can only transmit data at a slow rate of 160 bits per second, and it is estimated to have about 10 years of power left before it becomes a permanent time capsule.
