We decoded NASA’s messages to aliens by hand

In 1977, twin golden records were sent into space on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Still sailing through space at nearly 60,000 km per hour, the records contain sound, songs, and images from earth. But how did NASA include images on an analog record? Here, we decoded the audio, and see the images the way that aliens were intended to see them. Video by: Cory Zapatka, William Poor, Sophie Erickson Graphics: Alex Parkin Audio: Andrew Marino Executive Producers: Nilay Patel, Eleanor Donovan Director of Audience Development: Ruben Salvadori Social Media Manager: Dilpreet Kainth General Manager: Stephen Belser Network Development: Sarah Bishop Woods Thanks to: Alessandra Potenza, Ron Barry Special thanks to Ron Barry for walking us through his own audio decoding process, which got us excited in the story over a year ago. You can read about his own adventure and watch his process produce results in real-time in his own video in the links below: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/05/how-to-decode-the-images-on-th.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibByF9XPAPg&feature=youtu.be Link to Manuel’s code on GitHub: https://github.com/aizquier/voyagerimb Link to the full audio data: https://soundcloud.com/user-482195982/voyager-golden-record-encoded-images The Verge’s sponsors play an important role in funding our journalism, but do not influence editorial content. For more information about our ethics policy, visit https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/2FqJZMl Like Verge Science on Facebook: http://bit.ly/2hoSukO Follow on Twitter: http://bit.ly/2Kr29B9 Follow on Instagram: https://goo.gl/7ZeLvX Read More: http://www.theverge.com Community guidelines: http://bit.ly/2D0hlAv Subscribe to Verge on YouTube for explainers, product reviews, technology news, and more: http://goo.gl/G5RXGs