Voyager's
Final
Message
1017 days until we lose contact (estimated from on-board power supplies)
47 Years in space
24,750.841 million KM Travelled

We're inviting NASA to transmit a final message from humanity to the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft

We'd like you and your friends to contribute a suggestion of what it should say.

Your message to the Voyager spacecraft

If you could send such a message about humanity, to be read by an alien civilisation hundreds of millions of years from now, then what would you say?

The Voyagers are a long way from home right now and talking to them, even through NASA's deep space communications network, is quite slow. So you need to keep your message pretty short; just 1000 characters, (about the length of seven tweets) - see the FAQs for more information.

Here's our suggested message:

Over 40 years after leaving Earth this spacecraft named Voyager had broken into interstellar space, 20 billion kilometers from its home planet, & was still powered & collecting useful data.

During this time our society had changed significantly, its population doubling to over 7 billion, & the challenges of living sustainably & peacefully together had grown more urgent.

Our technologies had also become increasingly digital, raising our computing capability, pushing the frontiers of our knowledge faster & accelerating our development as a single, interconnected global civilization; with all the advantages and problems that this brings.

With onboard power dwindling, the uploading of this message is one of the last contacts we will have with this spacecraft. We hope that one day, in finding our Voyager, you will know of our existence & our desire, like yours, to explore & better understand this Universe we have shared with you.

With peace & hope from the people of planet Earth.

Dec 2023

FAQs

It's true that the Voyagers' computer memories are big enough to store a longer message, and the tape recorders on board could even still (just) be used to store more information. But the data rate that Voyager can "hear" at from almost 20 billion km away, is very low these days and time on NASA's Deep Space Network of powerful communications dishes is at a premium. So the smaller the message, the more chance there is of persuading them to send it.

The Voyager Timeline

Mission milestones
1977
Voyager 2 launches on 20th August 1977, Voyager 1 launches on 5th September 1977.
1979
Voyager 1 flies by Jupiter and its moons in January 1979, Voyager 2 flies by Jupiter and its moons in April.
1980-1985
Voyager 1 flies by Saturn and its moons in November 1980. Voyager 2 flies by Saturn and its moons in June 1981 & Uranus and its moons in November 1985.
1989-1990
Voyager 2 flies by Neptune and its moons in November 1989. Voyager 1 takes the 'family portrait' photo, from around 6 billion km, on 14th February 1990.
February 1998
Voyager 1 overtakes Pioneer 10 as the most distant spacecraft from the Sun, at 69.419 AU.
August 2012
Voyager 1 becomes first artificial object to leave the solar system.

The Voyager Programme

  • The twin Voyager spacecraft left Earth in 1977, on trajectories which would take them eventually right out of the Solar System and into the galaxy beyond.
  • In this benign environment of interstellar space they will last a very very long time - perhaps a billion years. They will probably outlive the human race and they might even survive beyond the lifespan of the Earth itself.
  • With this in mind a team of big thinkers lead by the cosmologist Carl Sagan included a Golden Record bolted to the side of each spacecraft. On these records are encoded photographs of Earth - and human society, greetings in many languages and music - 27 tracks spanning centuries of music making, across the world through much of human history.
  • Almost 40 years after they left Earth both spacecraft are still doing well and we are in regular radio contact with them. Their computer memories, although small by today's standards, are big enough to store a short, 1000 character text based message from us. And there's still enough electrical power onboard, for the next 8 years or so, to receive and save such a message.
  • We'd like to try and persuade the great folks at NASA, who are still in contact with the Voyagers, to send such a message; and using this Facebook page and app we wanted to give you a chance to suggest what it could say.