We decoded NASA’s messages to aliens by hand

In 1977, twin golden records were sent into space on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Still sailing through space at nearly 60,000 km per hour, the records contain sound, songs, and images from earth. But how did NASA include images on an analog record? Here, we decoded the audio, and see the images the way that aliens were intended to see them. Video by: Cory Zapatka, William Poor, Sophie Erickson Graphics: Alex Parkin Audio: Andrew Marino Executive Producers: Nilay Patel, Eleanor Donovan Director of Audience Development: Ruben Salvadori Social Media Manager: Dilpreet Kainth General Manager: Stephen Belser Network Development: Sarah Bishop Woods Thanks to: Alessandra Potenza, Ron Barry Special thanks to Ron Barry for walking us through his own audio decoding process, which got us excited in the story over a year ago. You can read about his own adventure and watch his process produce results in real-time in his own video in the links below: