Voyager Golden Record Trivia
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49 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 49 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
Carl Sagan of Cornell University chaired the selection committee; he had co-designed NASA's earlier interstellar plaque, and his team assembled the record's music, pictures and spoken greetings during 1977.
Q 03Whose idea was it to put a message about humanity aboard the Voyagers?
Project manager John Casani
John Casani, Voyager's project manager at JPL, proposed in late 1976 that the probes carry a message for any finder, and asked a Cornell-led committee to produce it.
Q 04Why did Sagan's team choose a metal phonograph record over the obvious alternative?
It would outlast tape in space
The team judged a metal phonograph record would outlast magnetic tape, which degrades in space over long spans; a grooved disc could also carry encoded pictures as well as sound.
Q 05How many images are encoded on the record?
116
There are 116 images, beginning with a calibration circle and continuing through diagrams of DNA, the Solar System and human anatomy to photographs of Earth's landscapes, animals and people.
Q 06Spoken greetings on the record are in how many languages?
55
Greetings in 55 languages are included, ranging from ancient Akkadian, Hittite and Sumerian to modern tongues; most were recorded at Cornell University in 1977, with each speaker choosing their own words.
Q 07Which UN Secretary-General recorded a spoken message for the record?
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim, UN Secretary-General from 1972 to 1981, recorded a short spoken message on behalf of the United Nations; it is delivered in English.
Q 08Which composer has the most pieces on the record?
Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach has three pieces on the record: the opening of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, the Gavotte en rondeau from the Partita No. 3 for violin, and a Well-Tempered Clavier prelude and fugue.
Q 09Which US president's printed message is included on the record?
Jimmy Carter
President Jimmy Carter's printed message, written in June 1977, calls the record 'a present from a small, distant world' and hopes humanity may one day join '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
Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry's 1958 hit, is the record's only rock 'n' roll track; when Alan Lomax called rock adolescent, the reply was that 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
Here Comes the Sun was reportedly the Beatles' choice, with the band willing but EMI refusing to license it; producer Timothy Ferris later called the story apocryphal, saying it was never seriously considered.
Q 13Which future star record producer served as sound engineer, on John Lennon's recommendation?
Q 21What is the record made of?
Gold-plated copper
Each disc is gold-plated copper, 12 inches across; it is housed in an aluminium cover electroplated with a sample of uranium-238 and packed with a stylus and cartridge.
Q 22Why 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 23What inscription was hand-etched into the record's run-out groove, nearly getting it rejected?
To the makers of music – all worlds, all times
Jimmy Iovine
Jimmy Iovine, then a young New York studio engineer who had worked with John Lennon, engineered the record's audio after Lennon, unable to take part himself, suggested him.
Q 14Which blues guitarist's hymn 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' is on the record?
Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson recorded the wordless gospel-blues 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' in 1927; its humming and slide guitar were chosen to express human loneliness.
Q 15Which jazz trumpeter is among the musicians on the record?
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven's 1927 recording 'Melancholy Blues' is the record's jazz selection, part of a roughly 90-minute programme spanning Western classical music, a Chinese guqin piece and a Bulgarian folk song.
Q 16Which electronic composer's work is on the record?
Laurie Spiegel
Laurie Spiegel's computer realisation of Kepler's Harmonices Mundi, heard as 'Music of the Spheres', opens the record's sounds-of-Earth sequence; she created it on Bell Labs' GROOVE system.
Q 17Which of these classical composers is NOT named as being represented on the record?
Wagner
Wagner has no piece on the record; its Western classical works include Mozart's Queen of the Night aria, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and two pieces by Beethoven.
Q 18The cetacean recordings on the record came from Roger Payne's 1970 album titled what?
Songs of the Humpback Whale
Songs of the Humpback Whale, Roger Payne's 1970 album, made whale song famous and helped launch the save-the-whales movement; Payne supplied the humpback recordings used on the record.
Q 19Which Beethoven symphony has its first movement on the record?
Fifth
The first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is on the record, in Otto Klemperer's Philharmonia Orchestra recording; Beethoven is also represented by the Cavatina from his String Quartet No. 13.
Q 20At what speed is the record designed to be played?
16⅔ rpm
The record is cut for 16⅔ rpm, half the usual LP speed, which doubled the playing time per side; the cover diagram gives the rotation period in units of the hydrogen hyperfine transition.
Producer Timothy Ferris had 'To the makers of music – all worlds, all times' etched by hand in the run-out groove; because it was not in the specifications, NASA nearly replaced the disc with a blank before relenting.
Q 24The map on the record's cover locates the Sun relative to how many pulsars?
14
The cover's map shows the Sun's position relative to 14 pulsars, each line marked in binary with the pulsar's period; the same design had been engraved on NASA's earlier interstellar plaques.
Q 25How long does one side of the record take to play, according to the binary number on the cover?
About an hour
The cover's side-view drawing of the disc and stylus carries a binary number giving the playing time of one side as about an hour; the top drawing shows the stylus tracking from the outside in.
Q 26How are colour pictures stored on the record?
As three frames for red, green and blue
Colour pictures are stored as three consecutive frames, one each for red, green and blue; a picture of the Sun's spectrum is included so finders can calibrate the colours.
Q 27How many vertical lines make up each picture on the record?
512
Each picture is built from 512 vertical scan lines encoded in the audio signal; a calibration circle in the first picture lets finders check their aspect ratio.
Q 28Where were the record's lacquer masters cut?
Boulder, Colorado
The lacquer masters were cut at the JVC Cutting Center in Boulder, Colorado; metal mothers made from them went to a record-processing plant in Gardena, California for the finished discs.
Q 29How many Voyager records were made in total?
8
Only two flew; the rest stayed on Earth.
Q 30Which star will Voyager 1 pass within about 1.6 light-years of in roughly 40,000 years?
Gliese 445
Gliese 445, a red dwarf in Camelopardalis, is the star the probe will pass at about 1.6 light-years in some 40,000 years; the star itself is approaching the Sun.