An official message from Earth to aliens

An official message from Earth to aliens

An official message from Earth to aliens is hurling through space. In the ‘70s, a plaque describing Earth was designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake so that only a scientifically-educated being who understands hydrogen would be able to translate it. The plaque was put on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which hasn’t been in contact with us since 2003 and is now more than 8 billion miles away

The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by extraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.

The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft were the first human-built objects to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. The plaques were attached to the spacecraft's antenna support struts in a position that would shield them from erosion by interstellar dust.