The Message to Aliens: Who Sent Earth’s Address for Humanity?

On 2 March 1972, NASA launched Pioneer 10 away from Earth. Attached to its body was a gold-anodized aluminium plaque showing a man, a woman, a map of the Solar System, and the location of Earth. The plaque was meant to tell another civilization where the spacecraft came from. There was no global vote before our address was sent into space. A small group—Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, and Linda Salzman Sagan—decided which image would represent the human race.

NASA followed with Pioneer 11 in 1973, the Arecibo radio message in 1974, and two golden records on Voyager in 1977. NASA says the records carry pictures, sounds, music, and greetings in 55 languages. SETI records that the Arecibo message described the Solar System, DNA, and human beings before being aimed at the star cluster M13, about 25,000 light-years away.