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Science20 August and 5 September 1977

Launch of Voyager 1 and 2

Also called: Voyager Golden Record, Golden Record

Voyager 2 left Cape Canaveral on 20 August 1977 and Voyager 1 on 5 September, each on a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket and each carrying the Golden Record, a disc of the sounds and pictures of Earth.

The Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket with Voyager 1 on the pad, Cape Canaveral, 1977
The Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket with Voyager 1 on the pad, Cape Canaveral, 1977

NASA · Public domain · Source

Voyager 2 went first. Launched sixteen days later on a faster path, Voyager 1 overtook it that December and so reached Jupiter first. Each probe weighed a little over 800 kg; too far from the Sun for solar panels, they carried three nuclear batteries that turn the heat of decaying plutonium into electricity.

On the side of each is a 30 cm gold-plated copper record, chosen by a committee led by the astronomer Carl Sagan: greetings in 55 languages, the sounds of wind, thunder, birds and a baby, ninety minutes of music from around the world, and 115 pictures of the Earth and its people. The cover shows how to play it and, using pulsars, where the Sun is. No one knows whether anyone will ever find it; it is a letter saying who we were.

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The map in 1977

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States and rulers at the time
United States — President Jimmy Carter
Places
Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 41

People

  • Carl Sagan1934 – 1996

    key figure · American astronomer and writer who led the making of the Voyager Golden Record and persuaded NASA to turn Voyager 1 around in 1990 to photograph the Earth from six billion kilometres — the Pale Blue Dot. Author of Cosmos

Before and after

Later
1979 Voyagers at Jupiter

Themes that include this event

  • Space Exploration1957 – 2012

    From Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, to Apollo 11’s first landing on the Moon, Apollo 13’s return from behind it and the Voyagers, which passed the outer planets and went on into interstellar space — the paths of the people and probes that left the Earth