Pioneer Plaques

Imagine if you will a spacecraft floating in the blackness. It's size, when compared to the stars and planets it moves between, is insignificant; and attached to it, smaller still, is a message to any who may encounter the spacecraft. A small plaque, made of gold, upon which is attached a message from humanity to any intelligent being that may encounter. It is the pioneer plaque, one of two sent out by NASA as a first hopeful gesture and admission that there may be life among the stars.

A look at the Pioneer Plaques

The initial idea for the Pioneer Plaques came from a journalist covering the space program, Eric Burgess. He and Richard Hoagland, an author whose non fiction books suggest that life once existed on Mars, approached Carl Sagan with the idea, who in turn took it to NASA. The idea was picked up and Sagan was given three weeks to design the message, which would accompany the soon to be launched Pioneer 10 spacecraft.

Sagan was up to the task, designing and arraigning for the creation of the first pioneer plaque. There would be no words as such on the plaque, for it was assumed that any intelligent life form to discover the plaque would not be speaking a terrestrial language. There would instead be pictures and images, which were drawn by Sagan's wife Linda Salzman Sagan.

The plaque came in on time and was attached to the Pioneer 10, a gold anodised plate of aluminum, designed to last as long as the spacecraft itself, if not longer. On its surface were etchings depicting as much data as possible on the small canvas available (9 by 6 inches), but how to communicate with a hypothetical life form, one which may posses powers of observation never imagined by man?

The Pioneer Plaques Message

The most notable feature on the plaque is the depiction of a man and a woman. They are drawn without clothing to give the most accurate illustration of what humanity looks like, and the man's arm is raised. It looks like a wave, like a greeting to the being that encounters the message, but the raised arm serves a double purpose; it also demonstrated the possible movement of the appendage. Likewise most of the images served more than one purpose.

At the upper left is a symbol representing the hyperfine transition of hydrogen. Why hydrogen? It was thought at the time that this was the most common element in the universe, and so if a being could recognize this it would serve as a key to translate the rest of the information. Likewise the planets were laid out at the bottom of the plaque alongside our sun, giving a clue as to where we came from. The spaceship itself was depicted along with its travel path, much to serve the same purpose.

Final Thoughts

Most scientists who were given the plaque and asked to figure out what all the symbols meant were not able to do so with a great degree of accuracy; in fact not one was able to guess at all of them correctly. In addition the second plaque, attached to Pioneer 11, was a duplicate of the first, which leads to an inaccuracy as the travel paths of both spaceships were not identical.

As a first attempt to send a message to extraterrestrial life forms the Pioneer Plaques are not perfect, but the fact that the attempt was made at all is the real accomplishment.

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