@nytpu Oh wow!

@Akshay I mean, we’re constantly sending messages to the stars that travel much faster than Voyager 2!

@emerybrooks All hail

@JohnBarentine I don't know the timescale, but I would guess that the most important modes for how the positions and periods change were known when the map was made. Also, I imagine there's a lot of redundancy with 14 pulsars on there!

A diagram in the lower left quadrant indicates the position of Earth relative to 14 pulsars. The period of each pulsar, in units of the inverse hyperfine frequency, is indicated in binary along its line.

The periods of the pulsars, which are given to very high precision, change in a predictable way. So any civilization that discovered the probe should be able to determine where it came from, even in the far-flung future.

The images on the record’s cover include instructions for how to play it, and a cosmic map that pinpoints the probe’s origin. The map is the same as the plaques on the Pioneer probes.

A depiction of the hyperfine transition in neutral hydrogen appears in the lower right corner. This emits a photon with a characteristic wavelength of 21 cm and a frequency of 1,420 MHz. Distances and frequencies shown on the map use these as base units.

Besides the audio tracks, the album contains 115 encoded images.

Many of the images are under copyright that prevents sharing them, but you can see a gallery here:

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images-on-the-golden-record/

And here is a playlist with the “Sounds of Earth” tracks from the golden records carried by the Voyager probes:

https://soundcloud.com/nasa/sets/golden-record-sounds-of

The audio contents of the golden record were uploaded to SoundCloud a few years ago.

NASA's “Greetings to the Universe” playlist contains greetings in 55 different languages. The English recording is a 6yo Nick Sagan, son of Carl Sagan and Linda Salzman.

https://soundcloud.com/nasa/sets/golden-record-greetings-to-the

Like its twin, Voyager 2 carried a gold-plated phonograph record containing sounds and images of life on Earth.

The covers are made of aluminum and electroplated with Uranium-238 so any civilization discovering these artifacts can estimate their age.

Image: NASA/JPL

Those trajectories led both probes out of the heliosphere.

Voyager 2 punctured the hot, dilute bubble of plasma associated with the solar wind in 2018, entering a transitional region where the colder, denser medium of interstellar space begins to dominate.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/voyager-2-illuminates-boundary-of-interstellar-space

Here's a timeline of the mission and a view of the probes' paths through the outer Solar System.

Image: NASA

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to visit all four of the giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

NASA originally planned a "Grand Tour" that would use four probes to explore the five (at the time) outer planets.

That plan was scrapped over cost and replaced with two probes. The idea was to investigate Jupiter and Saturn. If the first probe worked out okay, the second would be directed on to Uranus and Neptune. So Voyager 2 more or less carried out the Grand Tour.

Image: NASA/JPL

You can see a live mission status for both craft here. It updates in real time!

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

“I hold the buying of more books than one can peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul’s reaching towards infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish”

— Edward Newton, “A Magnificent Farce”

@deirdresm To be fair, I still have a 1 TB LaCie external (not rugged) from 2009 that is still humming along.

@deirdresm Great drives, but that price! Yikes!

@martycoote This is a truly lovely thought. Thank you!

The Voyager 2 spacecraft launched #OTD in 1977.

It is currently 12.4 billion miles from Earth, hurtling through interstellar space at about 34,400 mph with respect to the sun.

Voyager 2 is so far from Earth that round trip for signals is 36.5 hours.

Only its twin Voyager 1 (which launched a few weeks later, but took a more direct route out of the solar system) is further.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A remake of “The Trouble with Tribbles” but it’s about my to-read pile.