The Voyager Golden Record is a phonograph record included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. It contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, that may find it. The Voyager spacecraft will take about 40,000 years to come near another star, 'near' meaning in this case within around 1.7 light-years' distance; hence, if other beings do not come in the direction of the spacecraft to meet them, it will take at least that long for the Golden Record to be found.
As of 2006, the Voyager spacecraft became the third and fourth human artifacts to escape entirely from the solar system. Pioneers 10 and 11, which were launched in 1972 and 1973 and preceded Voyager in outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future.
With this example before them, NASA placed a more comprehensive (and eclectic) message aboard Voyager 1 and 2 — a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.
“ This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. ”
— U.S. President Jimmy Carter
Contents
The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
After NASA had received criticism over the nudity on the Pioneer plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included.
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
According to astronomer Frank Drake, there were many negative reactions to the plaque due to the fact that the human beings were displayed naked. The Chicago Sun-Times retouched its image to hide the genitals of the man and woman. The Los Angeles Times received "angry letters" from readers that accused NASA of wasting taxpayer money to send "obscenities" into space. [1]