The Vinyl Frontier

The Story of NASA’s Interstellar Mixtape

By: Jonathan Scott

Narrated by: Mark Elstob

In 1977 a group of scientists, artists and writers gathered in a house in Ithaca, New York to work on the most important mixtape ever conceived. It wasn’t from one person to another - it was from Earth to the cosmos. When NASA sent Voyagers 1 and 2 on a grand tour of the outer planets, they knew the ultimate fate of these plucky probes would be to drift forever in the unimaginable void of interstellar space. With this gloomy outcome in mind, NASA did something optimistic: they commissioned astronomer Carl Sagan to create a message to be fixed to the side of the spacecraft, should they ever be found by aliens. So Carl Sagan made a record. A metal record.

The Vinyl Frontier tells the story of Voyager Golden Record, from first phone call to final launch, when Voyager 1 and 2 left our planet bearing their hopeful message from the summer of ’77 to a distant future.

©2020 Jonathan Scott (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

“Bursts with gloriously geeky detail.” (The Telegraph)

“A vital addition to the library of anyone with an interest in the Voyager missions, extraterrestrial contact, or Carl Sagan.” (Astronomy Now)