Pioneer 10 and 11 were designed to prove that
we could get beyond Mars and get beyond the
asteroid belt, have a spacecraft survive,
and stay in contact with that spacecraft.
Pioneers 10 and 11 both carried a very interesting
plaque. The main forces behind the plaque
were the astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank
Drake. Because the spacecraft would eventually
go outside of the solar system, Sagan and
Drake felt that it was important to, in a
way, sign the spacecraft on behalf of the
human race.
One of the plaque’s primary images is the
image of a hydrogen atom undergoing a quantized
energy transition. Sagan and Drake assumed
that the laws of physics would be the same
throughout the entire universe.
So in the same way that a map has a key that
tells you how to interpret it and the distance
depicted in it, the hydrogen is meant to do
that for the plaque.
These lines, measured from known stars called
pulsars, represent the Earth’s location
in the galaxy when this mission was sent out
into space. At the bottom of the plaque is
a depiction of the spacecraft leaving the
Earth, going to Jupiter, and then leaving
the solar system.
Most recognizable are probably the two human
figures, a man and woman. The figures were
designed to be pan-racial, although you can
see that they were also modeled after a sort
of classic, Greek sculpture.
SAGAN: “We thought we would put a message on it
to indicate a little bit of where we are,
when we are, and who we are. And the plaque
has served a very useful purpose in making
us think about what sort of impression we
might wish to give to the cosmos.”
