Pioneer 10 Plaque
THE PLAQUE
This material is quoted from
NASA SP-446
When signals from the two Pioneers can no
longer be received at Earth, they will have another
mission as they continue into interstellar space.
This final mission began when, in a high vacuum,
Pioneer 10 gleamed under the harsh lights of
an artificial sun in the space simulator at TRW
Systems, California. The final test was underway
before the spacecraft was to be shipped to
Kennedy Space Center. A group of science correspondents
from the national press were at TRW
Systems for a briefing on Pioneer and had been
invited to see the spacecraft under test.
Looking at Pioneer through the portholes of the
simulator, one of the correspondents, Eric Burgess,
then with The Christian Science Monitor, visualized
Pioneer 10 as mankind's first emissary beyond
our Solar System. This spacecraft should carry a
special message from mankind, he thought, a
message that would tell any finder of the spacecraft
a million or even a billion years hence that
planet Earth had evolved an intelligent species that
could think beyond its own time and beyond its
own Solar System.
He mentioned this idea to Richard Hoagland, a
freelance writer, and to Don Bane, then with the
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and they enthusiastically
agreed. The result was that Burgess and
Hoagland approached Dr. Carl Sagan, Director of
the Laboratory of Planetary Studies, Cornell
University, who was then visiting the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, in connection with
Mariner 9's mission to Mars. A short while earlier,
Dr. Sagan had been involved in a conference in the
Crimea devoted to the problems of communicating
with extraterrestrial intelligences and, together
with Dr. Frank Drake, Director of the National
Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Cornell
University, had designed one type of message that
might be used to communicate with an alien
intelligence.
Dr. Sagan was enthusiastic about the idea
of a message on the Pioneer spacecraft. He and
Dr. Drake designed a plaque, and Linda Salzman
Sagan prepared the artwork. The design was
presented to the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration; they accepted it for this first
Pioneer from our Solar System into the Galaxy.
The plaque design was etched into a gold-
anodized aluminum plate 15.25 by 22.8 cm
(6 by 9 in.) and 0.127 cm (0.05 in.) thick. This
plate was attached to the antenna support struts
of the spacecraft in a position where it would
be shielded from erosion by interstellar dust
[illustration]
.
When Pioneer 10 flew by Jupiter, the spacecraft
acquired sufficient kinetic energy to carry
it completely out of our Solar System. In about
100,000 years, it will have coasted to the distance
of the nearest star, in the direction of the constellation
Taurus. Sometime, perhaps many billions of
years from now, it may pass through the planetary
system of a remote stellar neighbor, one of whose
planets may have evolved intelligent life.
If that life possesses sufficient capability to
detect the Pioneer spacecraft - needing a higher
technology than mankind possesses today - it
may also have the curiosity and the technical
ability to pick up the spacecraft and take it into a
laboratory to inspect it. Then the plaque with its
message from Earth should be found and possibly
deciphered.
-
Richard O. Fimmel, James Van Allen, Eric Burgess
-
PIONEER: First to Jupiter, Saturn, and Beyond
NASA SP-446, Scientific and Technical Information Office,
NASA, Washington, D. C., 1980, pp. 247-249
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