50 free Voyager Golden Record trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Voyager Golden Record trivia quiz covers the most famous message humanity has ever sent. It explains how NASA's John Casani handed Carl Sagan $1,500 and six weeks, why the team chose a gold-plated copper record over tape, and what went on it: 116 images, 55 spoken greetings, Kurt Waldheim and Jimmy Carter, the sounds of Earth, Morse code Latin, whale song, Bach and Blind Willie Johnson, 'Johnny B. Goode' and the argument it caused, and Ann Druyan's hour of brainwaves compressed into a minute. It also decodes the cover — the pulsar map, the hydrogen clock, the 16⅔ rpm playing speed, the uranium-238 sample — and follows the discs out past Pluto and into interstellar space towards Gliese 445 and Ross 248. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has read Sagan; the rest go deep into the details from Murmurs of Earth. Our Hubble Space Telescope and physics pages sit alongside this one. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's Voyager articles and the NASA sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many Golden Records were sent into space, and where?
Two, one on each 1977 probe
They are identical phonograph records launched in 1977, intended as a time capsule for any intelligent finder.
Q 02Which astronomer chaired the committee that selected the contents of the record?
Carl Sagan
It took almost a year; NASA project manager John Casani gave him a $1,500 budget and six weeks, and the team spent their own money too.
Q 03Whose idea was it to put a message about humanity aboard the Voyagers?
Project manager John Casani
He delegated the job to Sagan, who with Linda Salzman and Frank Drake settled on a metal record rather than tape.
Q 04Why did Sagan's team choose a metal phonograph record over the obvious alternative?
It would outlast tape in space
Casani insisted the record weigh no more than the Pioneer plaque.
Q 05How many images are encoded on the record?
116
One is used for calibration; each picture is made of 512 vertical scan lines.
Q 06Spoken greetings on the record are in how many languages?
55
They were re-recorded by Cornell language departments after the UN delegates' versions had problems, and cover over 65% of humanity's native speakers.
Q 07Which UN Secretary-General recorded the English greeting on the record?
Kurt Waldheim
Sagan's six-year-old son Nick also recorded a greeting.
Q 08What Latin phrase is sent in Morse code among the record's 'sounds of Earth'?
Per aspera ad astra
It means 'through hardships to the stars'.
Q 09Which US president's printed message is included on the record?
Jimmy Carter
It calls the record 'a present from a small, distant world' and expresses the hope of one day joining 'a community of galactic civilizations'.
Q 10Whose brainwaves, recorded for an hour and compressed into a minute, are on the record?
Ann Druyan
The creative director thought about Earth's history, civilisation's problems and what it was like to fall in love; she married Sagan in 1981.
Q 11Which Chuck Berry song was included, despite Alan Lomax objecting that rock music was 'adolescent'?
Johnny B. Goode
Sagan's reply: 'There are a lot of adolescents on the planet.'
Q 12Which Beatles song was reportedly considered but left off because EMI would not license it?
Here Comes the Sun
Ann Druyan recalled EMI wanting $50,000 per record; Timothy Ferris says it was never seriously considered.
Q 13Which future star record producer served as sound engineer, on John Lennon's recommendation?
Jimmy Iovine
Lennon himself was contacted to contribute but could not take part.
Q 21At what speed is the record designed to be played?
16⅔ rpm
One rotation takes 3.6 seconds, a figure encoded on the cover in units of the hydrogen transition time.
Q 22What is the record made of?
Gold-plated copper
The 12-inch copper disc was plated first with nickel and then gold; the aluminium cover carries a sample of uranium-238.
Q 23Why is a sample of uranium-238 electroplated onto the cover?
So finders can date it from its decay
Its half-life is 4.468 billion years; the ratio of remaining uranium reveals the record's age.
Q 14Which blues guitarist's hymn 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' is on the record?
Blind Willie Johnson
The gospel-blues slide guitar piece from 1927 was chosen to express loneliness.
Q 15Which jazz trumpeter is among the musicians on the record?
Louis Armstrong
The 90-minute music selection ranges from Bach and Beethoven to a Chinese guqin piece and a Bulgarian folk song.
Q 16Which electronic composer's work is on the record?
Laurie Spiegel
She sits alongside Chinese, Indian, Bulgarian and Azerbaijani musicians in a deliberately global selection.
Q 17Which of these classical composers is NOT named as being represented on the record?
Wagner
Beethoven is there too; the selection was completed by a team including ethnomusicologists Robert E. Brown and Alan Lomax.
Q 18The cetacean recordings on the record came from Roger Payne's 1970 album titled what?
Songs of the Humpback Whale
Roger Payne's recordings had helped launch the save-the-whales movement.
Q 19Why did NASA refuse to allow a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record?
Criticism over nudity on the Pioneer plaque
Only a silhouette went in, though Jon Lomberg's vertebrate-evolution diagram still shows anatomically correct figures.
Q 20On the record's vertebrate-evolution diagram, which figure waves, reversing the earlier plaque?
The woman
On the Pioneer plaque it was the man who raised his hand.
Q 24What inscription was hand-etched into the record's run-out groove, nearly getting it rejected?
To the makers of music – all worlds, all times
It was not in the specifications, so the record was initially to be swapped for a blank; Sagan talked the administrator round.
Q 25The map on the record's cover locates the Sun relative to how many pulsars?
14
It is the same pulsar map that flew on the Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques.
Q 26How long does one side of the record take to play, according to the binary number on the cover?
About an hour
More precisely between 53 and 54 minutes; the drawing shows the stylus should play from the outside in.
Q 27How are colour pictures stored on the record?
As three frames for red, green and blue
A colour image of the Sun's spectrum was included for calibration.
Q 28How many vertical lines make up each picture on the record?
512
That is 2 to the ninth power; a circle in the first picture lets finders check their aspect ratio.
Q 29Where were the record's lacquer masters cut?
Boulder, Colorado
Pyral in France supplied the blanks, JVC in Boulder cut the masters and eight discs were plated in Gardena.
Q 30How many Voyager records were made in total?
8
Only two flew; the rest stayed on Earth.