Olympians Included on the Voyager 1 and 2 Golden Record (5)

The Voyager 1 and 2 probes were non-manned space flights launched by NASA in 1977 with a message aboard in an attempt to communicate to extraterrestrials the story of humans on Earth. The Voyager Golden Record was a message from Planet Earth which contains 116 images plus a variety of natural sounds. The items were selected by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.

In addition to images, the Golden Record contains musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in 59 languages, and printed messages from USA President Jimmy Carter and UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. Carter’s message contained the following statement, “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.”

Image #72 on the Golden Record was a still image from Heat Three of Round One of the 1972 Olympic men’s 200 metres, won by Valeriy Borzov, followed by Edwin Roberts, with Motsapi Moorosi and Su Wen-Ho in fourth and fifth, respectively. Also included was a stroboscopic photograph of Cathy Rigby performing on the balance beam at the 1972 München Olympics.