Greetings from the Pioneers
Explanation:
Launched in the early 1970s
Pioneer 10 and 11 were appropriately named -
becoming the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt,
first to
fly by Jupiter and Saturn, and the first
human artifacts to venture beyond the solar system.
Now coasting through interstellar space,
they carry with them greetings in the form of a
gold anodized plaque with symbolic drawings
as illustrated above.
The male and female figures are drawn to the same scale
as the Pioneer spacecraft shown behind them. Immediately
to the left is a map of the position of the sun with respect to
nearby pulsars
and
the center of the galaxy
while below is a drawing of the
solar system indicating the
planet of origin. In the upper left
is a schematic of two fundamental states of
the hydrogen atom. These
diagrams along with other details of the
plaque were designed by Carl Sagan of Cornell University and are
intended to be decipherable by spacefaring
extraterrestrial civilizations.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
