Voyager Golden Record Trivia
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48 free Voyager Golden Record trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Voyager Golden Record trivia quiz covers the most famous message humanity has ever sent. It explains how NASA's John Casani handed Carl Sagan $1,500 and six weeks, why the team chose a gold-plated copper record over tape, and what went on it: 116 images, 55 spoken greetings, Kurt Waldheim and Jimmy Carter, the sounds of Earth, Morse code Latin, whale song, Bach and Blind Willie Johnson, 'Johnny B. Goode' and the argument it caused, and Ann Druyan's hour of brainwaves compressed into a minute. It also decodes the cover — the pulsar map, the hydrogen clock, the 16⅔ rpm playing speed, the uranium-238 sample — and follows the discs out past Pluto and into interstellar space towards Gliese 445 and Ross 248. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has read Sagan; the rest go deep into the details from Murmurs of Earth. Our Hubble Space Telescope and physics pages sit alongside this one. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's Voyager articles and the NASA sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which famous primatologist appears in one of the photographs encoded on the Golden Record?
Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall's picture with her chimpanzees is credited to her mother, Vanne, who had gone with her to Gombe in 1960 because officials would not let her stay there alone.
Q 02NASA vetoed one photograph chosen for the record, letting it fly only as a silhouette; what did it show?
A nude man and woman
A nude man and woman, photographed by George Hester, were cut because NASA had been criticised for the naked figures on an earlier spacecraft plaque; an outline of the couple took their place.
Q 03One of the record's 55 spoken greetings asks any listeners which homely question?
Have you eaten yet?
'Have you eaten yet?' is part of the greeting in Amoy, a Chinese dialect, which opens 'Friends from space, how are you all?' and closes by inviting the listeners to come and visit.
Q 04Why did the record's team choose a metal phonograph disc over magnetic tape?
It would outlast tape in space
It would outlast tape in space: the team judged that a metal disc would long outlive magnetic tape, and its grooves could carry coded pictures as well as sound.
Q 05Which American landscape photographer supplied two of the record's pictures, including a view of the Golden Gate Bridge?
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams took the Golden Gate Bridge view and a study of the Snake River below the Tetons; most of the record's photographs are in colour, but his two travel as he made them, in black and white.
Q 06Many of the record's spoken greetings in 55 languages were recorded at which university?
Cornell
Cornell's language departments stepped in after United Nations delegates, asked for short greetings, made speeches instead; the new speakers got no script, only a request to keep it brief.
Q 07Which UN Secretary-General recorded a spoken message for the record?
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim spoke for the United Nations in English; nine years later it emerged that he had concealed his wartime service as a German army intelligence officer in the Balkans.
Q 08Which composer has the most pieces on the record?
Bach
Bach has three pieces on the record, more than anyone else; the producers reasoned that even beings without hearing could find the symmetries in his music by studying the grooves.
Q 09Which US president's printed message is included on the record?
Jimmy Carter
President Jimmy Carter's printed message calls the record 'a present from a small, distant world' and voices the hope of one day joining 'a community of galactic civilizations'.
Q 10Whose brainwaves, recorded for an hour and compressed into a minute, are on the record?
Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan, the record's creative director, spent the hour thinking about Earth's history, human ideas and what it is like to fall in love; she married Carl Sagan in 1981.
Q 11Which Chuck Berry song was included, despite Alan Lomax objecting that rock music was 'adolescent'?
Johnny B. Goode
Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry's 1958 hit, is the record's only rock 'n' roll track; when Alan Lomax called rock adolescent, the reply was that there are a lot of adolescents on the planet.
Q 12Which Beatles song was reportedly considered but left off because EMI would not license it?
Here Comes the Sun
Here Comes the Sun was reportedly the Beatles' choice, with the band willing but EMI refusing to license it; producer Timothy Ferris later called the story apocryphal, saying it was never seriously considered.
Q 13Which future star record producer served as sound engineer, on John Lennon's recommendation?
Q 21What is the Golden Record made of?
Gold-plated copper
Gold-plated copper discs, 12 inches across and sealed in aluminium cases, are expected by their makers to stay readable for more than a billion years.
Q 22Why is uranium-238 electroplated onto the record's cover?
So finders can date it from its decay
So finders can date it from its decay: half of any uranium-238 breaks down every 4.5 billion years, so the share left acts as a clock showing how long the record has travelled.
Q 23The hand-etched dedication 'To the makers of music – all worlds, all times' nearly led NASA to do what?
Fly blank discs instead
Jimmy Iovine
Jimmy Iovine, then a young New York studio engineer who had worked with John Lennon, engineered the record's audio after Lennon, unable to take part himself, suggested him.
Q 14Which blues guitarist's wordless 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' is on the record?
Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson recorded the piece in 1927, humming over his slide guitar; it was chosen because it speaks of a plight as old as humanity, nightfall with no place to sleep.
Q 15Which jazz trumpeter is among the musicians on the record?
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven's 'Melancholy Blues' is the record's jazz track; he learned to play the cornet properly in a New Orleans boys' home, sent there at 11 for firing a gun on New Year's Eve.
Q 16Which electronic composer's work is on the record?
Laurie Spiegel
Laurie Spiegel's computer realisation of Kepler's Harmonices Mundi, heard as 'Music of the Spheres', opens the record's sounds-of-Earth sequence; she created it on Bell Labs' GROOVE system.
Q 17The record's Queen of the Night aria comes from which Mozart opera?
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute's 'Der Hölle Rache' flies in a Bavarian State Opera recording; in the opera the Queen sings it as she hands her daughter a dagger and orders her to kill.
Q 18On the record, greetings from United Nations delegates are blended with the songs of which animals?
Humpback whales
Humpback whales, recorded by the biologist Roger Payne, did not fit the sequence of Earth sounds, so producer Timothy Ferris mixed their songs in with the diplomats instead.
Q 19The first movement of which Beethoven symphony is on the record?
Fifth
The Fifth's first movement is on the record in Otto Klemperer's recording; its four-note opening had served the BBC as a 'V for Victory' call sign in broadcasts during the Second World War.
Q 20At what speed is the record designed to be played?
16⅔ rpm
The record is cut for 16⅔ rpm, half the usual LP speed, which doubled the playing time of each side; the cover gives the time of one rotation in binary so that finders can set the speed.
Fly blank discs instead: that was NASA's plan once an inspector found the words were not in the blueprints, until Sagan won a waiver by arguing they were the only human handwriting aboard.
Q 24The star map on the record's cover fixes the Sun's position using 14 of which objects?
Pulsars
Pulsars each tick at their own steady rate, so the map gives every one's period in binary; a finder who recognised them could work out both where the craft came from and when it left.
Q 25According to the binary number on its cover, how long does one side of the record play?
About an hour
About an hour is the playing time written in binary beside a side view of the disc and stylus; the cover's instructions are all given in drawings and numbers instead of words.
Q 26How are colour pictures stored on the record?
As three frames for red, green and blue
As three frames for red, green and blue: each colour picture is sent three times over, once per colour, and a picture of the Sun's spectrum is included so that finders can calibrate the result.
Q 27The Latin motto meaning 'to the stars through hardship' is carried on the record in which form?
Morse code
Morse code taps out 'ad astra per aspera' in the sounds of Earth, part of a sequence that walks through human technology from the first tools to trains, cars and jet aircraft.
Q 28The roar of which rocket's lift-off is among the record's sounds of Earth?
Saturn V
Saturn V, the Moon rocket, caps a run of transport sounds that climbs from a horse and cart through a train, a bus and a jet flyby to the launch that sent astronauts to the Moon.
Q 29The record's Swedish greeting comes from a speaker who gives which occupation?
A computer programmer
A computer programmer is how she introduces herself, sending greetings from a little university town on the planet Earth; speakers were given no script, only a request to be brief.
Q 30In February 1998 Voyager 1 overtook which older NASA probe to become the most distant human-made object?
Pioneer 10
Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, led the way outward until the faster Voyager 1 passed it at about 69 times Earth's distance from the Sun; it carries the engraved plaque that paved the way for the Golden Record.