NASA, PBS marking 40 years since Voyager spacecraft launches

Forty years after blasting off, Earth's most distant ambassadors — the twin Voyager spacecraft — are carrying sounds and music of our planet ever deeper into the cosmos.

Think of them as messages in bottles meant for anyone — or anything — out there.

FILE - In this Aug. 4, 1977 photo provided by NASA, the "Sounds of Earth" record is mounted on the Voyager 2 spacecraft in the Safe-1 Building at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., prior to encapsulation in the protective shroud. Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of NASA's launch of Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles distant. (AP Photo/NASA)

This Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of NASA's launch of Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles distant. It departed from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 20, 1977 to explore Jupiter and Saturn.

Voyager 1 followed a few weeks later and is ahead of Voyager 2. It's humanity's farthest spacecraft at 13 billion miles away and is the world's only craft to reach interstellar space, the vast mostly emptiness between star systems. Voyager 2 is expected to cross that boundary during the next few years.

Each carries a 12-inch, gold-plated copper phonograph record (there were no CDs or MP3s back then) containing messages from Earth: Beethoven's Fifth, chirping crickets, a baby's cry, a kiss, wind and rain, a thunderous moon rocket launch, African pygmy songs, Solomon Island panpipes, a Peruvian wedding song and greetings in dozens of languages. There are also more than 100 electronic images on each record showing 20th-century life, traffic jams and all.

FILE - This undated image provided by NASA shows the cover of the 12-inch gold-plated copper disk that both Voyager spacecraft carry. The phonograph record contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. (AP Photo/NASA)

NASA is marking the anniversary of its back-to-back Voyager launches with tweets, reminisces and still captivating photos of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune taken by the Voyagers from 1979 through the 1980s.

Public television is also paying tribute with a documentary, "The Farthest - Voyager in Space," airing Wednesday on PBS at 9 p.m. EDT.

This undated photo provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab showing the Voyager spacecraft in Passadena, Calif. On right side of the craft is girder-like boom which holds science project equipment and the imaging camera. Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of NASA's launch of Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles distant. (JPL/NASA via AP)

The two-hour documentary describes the tense and dramatic behind-the-scenes effort that culminated in the wildly successful missions to our solar system's outer planets and beyond. More than 20 team members are interviewed, many of them long retired. There's original TV footage throughout, including a lookback at the late astronomer Carl Sagan of the 1980 PBS series "Cosmos." It also includes an interview with Sagan's son, Nick, who at 6 years old provided the English message: "Hello from the children of Planet Earth."

Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco — who joined Voyager's imaging team in 1980 — puts the mission up there with man's first moon landing.

FILE - In this Aug. 26, 1981 file photo, Voyager 2 mission director Dick Laeser looks at a platform on the end of a boom on a mock-up of the Voyager spacecraft during a news briefing at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. Sunday, Aug. 20, 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of NASA's launch of Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles distant. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon)

"I consider Voyager to be the Apollo 11 of the planetary exploration program. It has that kind of iconic stature," Porco, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

It was Sagan who, in large part, got a record aboard each Voyager. NASA was reluctant and did not want the records eclipsing the scientific goals. Sagan finally prevailed, but he and his fellow record promoters had less than two months to rustle everything up.

FILE - In this Aug. 20, 1977 photo provided by NASA, a Titan/Centaur 7 rocket stands ready at the launch pad with the 1,800-pound Voyager spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft departed from Cape Canaveral to explore Jupiter and Saturn. (AP Photo/NASA)

The identical records were the audio version of engraved plaques designed by Sagan and others for Pioneers 10 and 11, launched in 1972 and 1973.

The 55 greetings for the Voyager Golden Records were collected at Cornell University, where Sagan taught astronomy, and the United Nations in New York. The music production fell to science writer Timothy Ferris, a friend of Sagan living then in New York.

FILE - In this Saturday, Aug. 20, 1977 file photo, the Voyager 2 spacecraft, atop a Titan Centaur rocket, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The spacecraft will explore the outer planets Saturn and Jupiter. (AP Photo)

For the musical selections, Ferris and Sagan recruited friends along with a few professional musicians. They crammed in 90 minutes of music recorded at half-speed; otherwise it would have lasted just 45 minutes.

How to choose from an infinite number of melodies and melodious sounds representing all of Earth?

Beethoven, Bach and Mozart were easy picks. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven represented jazz, Blind Willie Johnson gospel blues.

For the rock 'n' roll single, the group selected Chuck Berry's 1958 hit "Johnny B. Goode." Bob Dylan was a close runner-up, and the Beatles also rated high. Elvis Presley's name came up (Presley died four days before Voyager 2's launch). In the end, Ferris thought "Johnny B. Goode" best represented the origins and creativity of rock 'n' roll.

Ferris still believes it's "a terrific record" and he has no "deep regrets" about the selections. Even the rejected tunes represented "beautiful materials."

"It's like handfuls of diamonds. If you're concerned that you didn't get the right handful or something, it's probably a neurotic problem rather than anything to do with the diamonds," Ferris told the AP earlier this week.

But he noted: "If I were going to start into regrets, I suppose not having Italian opera would be on that list."

The whole record project cost $30,000 or $35,000, to the best of Ferris' recollection.

NASA estimated the records would last 1 billion to 3 billion years or more — potentially outliving human civilization.

For Ferris, it's time more than distance that makes the whole idea of finders-keepers so incomprehensible.

A billion years from now, "Voyager could be captured by an advanced civilization of beings that don't exist yet ... It's literally imponderable what will happen to the Voyagers," he said.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia and Ukraine on Monday traded blame before the United Nations Security Council for the attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said have put the world “dangerously close to a nuclear accident.”

Without attributing blame, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said his agency has been able to confirm three attacks against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant since April 7.

“These reckless attacks must cease immediately,” he told the Security Council. “Though, fortunately, they have not led to a radiological incident this time, they significantly increase the risk … where nuclear safety is already compromised.”

The remote-controlled nature of the drones that have attacked the plant means that it is impossible to definitively determine who launched them, Grossi told reporters after the meeting.

“In order to say something like that, we must have proof,” he said. “These attacks have been performed with a multitude of drones.”

Zaporizhzhia sits in Russian-controlled territory in southeastern Ukraine and has six nuclear reactors.

Fears of a nuclear catastrophe have been at the forefront since Russian troops occupied the plant shortly after invading in February 2022. Continued fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces — as well as the tense supply situation at the plant — have raised the specter of a disaster.

Ukraine and its allies on Monday again blamed Russia for dangers at the site, with the United States saying, “Russia does not care about these risks.”

“If it did, it would not continue to forcibly control the plant,” U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council, which met at the initiative of the U.S. and Slovenia.

Russia, for its part, said Ukraine was to blame for the attacks.

“The IAEA’s report does not pinpoint which side is behind the attacks,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said. “We know full well who it is.”

“Over the last few months, such attacks not only resumed,” Nebenzia said, “they significantly intensified.”

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N., Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the attacks “a well-planned false flag operation by the Russian Federation,” which he alleged Russia had designed to distract the world from its invasion of its neighbor.

The Zaporizhzhia facility is one of the 10 biggest nuclear plants in the world. Fighting in the southern part of Ukraine where it is located has raised the specter of a potential nuclear disaster like the one at Chernobyl in 1986, where a reactor exploded and blew deadly radiation across a vast area.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine in recent months has been able to make significant advances along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line crossing eastern and southern Ukraine. Drones, artillery and missiles have featured heavily in what has become a war of attrition.

Russia and Ukraine have frequently traded accusations over the Zaporizhzhia plant.

The most recent strikes did not compromise the facility, which is designed to withstand a commercial airliner crashing into it, the IAEA said.

The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

FILE - The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, is seen in the background of the shallow Kakhovka Reservoir after the dam collapse, in Energodar, Russian-occupied Ukraine, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Officials at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant said that the site was attacked Sunday April 7, 2024, by Ukrainian military drones, including a strike on the dome of the plant’s sixth power unit. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)

IAEA warns that attacks on a nuclear plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine put the world at risk

IAEA warns that attacks on a nuclear plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine put the world at risk