Nasa's Voyager-2 enters 40th year: Spacecraft carries Golden Record, collection of sounds, pictures & messages

Did you know that this year Nasa's ground-breaking Voyager-2 mission is all set to enter its 40th year this month? Well many of us are not even aware about the spacecraft that  will be carrying a golden record with different sounds of earth and international music and one of them is from India.

The launch of the Voyager 2 probe, which took place on August 20th, 1977 and this is the first spacecraft that have flown by all the four outer planets--Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune.The best part of this spacecraft is that the music of India is a Hindustani classical composition called "Jaat Kahan Ho", rendered by Surshri Kesarbai Kerkar.

The recording, which lasts for three minutes and 25 seconds, forms part of the 12-inch gold-plated copper disc carried by Voyager-2. Its twin, Voyager-1, launched on September 5, 1977, also carries a similar disc.

The Indian music was chosen by a Nasa-appointed committee chaired by Carl Sagan. In the book "Murmurs Of Earth - The Voyager Interstellar Record", published in 1978, Ann Druyan, Sagan's wife, recalls that Robert Brown, then executive director for the Centre For World Music in Berkeley placed "Jaat Kahan Ho" at the top of his list of world music for outer space.

About Nasa's Voyager-2

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to study all four of the solar system's giant planets up close. It is now exploring the outermost reaches of where the solar wind and the sun's magnetic field dominate space. In September 2007, it crossed the termination shock (where the speed of the solar wind drops below the speed of sound) at 84 AU (more than twice the distance to Pluto).