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The Pioneer plaques are a pair of aluminum plaques which were placed on board the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message from humanity, incase either the Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extratrestrial beings. more...
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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. They are meant to serve as a kind of interstellar "message in a bottle." However, the mean time for the spacecraft to come within 30 astronomical units of a star is longer than the current age of our galaxy.
The Pioneer spacecraft were the first human-built objects to leave the solar system. The plaque is attached to the antenna support struts in a position that shields it from erosion by stellar dust. NASA expects the plaques (and the crafts themselves) to survive longer than the Earth and Sun.
The Voyager Golden Record, a much more complex and detailed message using (then) state-of-the-art media, was attached to the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.
History
The original idea, that the Pioneer spacecraft should carry a message from mankind, was first mentioned by Eric Burgess when he visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California during the Mariner 9 mission. Together with Richard Hoagland, he approached Dr. Carl Sagan, who had lectured about communication with extraterrestrial intelligences at a conference in Crimea.
Dr. Sagan was enthusiastic about the idea of sending a message with the Pioneer spacecraft. NASA agreed to the plan and gave him three weeks to prepare a message. Together with Dr. Frank Drake he designed the plaque, and the artwork was prepared by his wife Linda Salzman Sagan.
The first plaque was launched with Pioneer 10 on March 2, 1972, and the second followed with Pioneer 11 on April 5, 1973. Both spacecraft left the solar system in the 1980s.
Physical properties
Material: 6061 T6 gold-anodized aluminum;
Width: 229 mm (9 inches);
Height: 152 mm (6 inches);
Thickness: 1.27 mm (0.05 inches);
Mean depth of engraving: 0.381 mm (0.015 inches);
Weight: approx. 0.120 kilograms;
Symbolism
Hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen
At the top left of the plate is a schematic representation of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen, which is the most abundant element in the universe. Below this symbol is a small vertical line to represent the binary digit 1. This spin-flip transition of a hydrogen atom from electron state spin up to electron state spin down can specify a unit of length (wavelength, 21 cm) as well as a unit of time (frequency, 1420 MHz). Both units are used as measurements in the other symbols. Note that since the plaque is 229 mm wide, the actual unit of length could have been depicted, although it wasn't.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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