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Pioneer plaque
Sign in to saveplaque attached to the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft in case extraterrestrial life finds them
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Encyclopedic overview
The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques that were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by intelligent extraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.
The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft were the first human-built objects to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. The plaques were attached to the spacecraft's antenna support struts in a position that would shield them from erosion by interstellar dust.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Pioneer plaque” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.