During the late 1970s, public debate and anti-nuclear protests encompassed not only the dangers posed by nuclear weapons but also issues related to nuclear energy, particularly the problem of radioactive waste from reactors and weapons production facilities. In the context of increasing political and public discourse on risks associated with nuclear technology, NASA launched two robotic spacecraft – Voyagers 1 and 2 – to explore the outer planets before leaving solar system to travel indefinitely through interstellar space. As well as a payload of scientific instruments, the Voyager space probes carry a gold plated phonograph record inscribed with a message to advanced extraterrestrials or descendants of humankind. Enclosed within its protective cover, the Voyager Record will last over a billion years and includes a selection of pictures, music, vocal greetings, and sounds to convey scientific knowledge and the diversity of human culture and life on Earth. In addition, a sample of uranium (isotope U-238) is electroplated on the protective cover as a ‘radioactive clock’ to identify when the spacecraft was launched. In the early 1990s, actors who played a major role in designing the Voyager Record such as astronomer Frank Drake and artist Jon Lomberg participated in workshops, organized by Sandia National Laboratories under the auspices of the US Department of Energy, to design markers for deterring humans from intruding into a prospective Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for the next 10,000 years. Drake and Lomberg played the role of ‘experts’ in communicating scientific knowledge and expressing judgements about the design and efficacy of markers, including symbols, scientific diagrams and pictograms as well as large-scale architectural structures covering sixteen square miles, to signify the presence of lethal radioactive waste to future generations.

This paper will examine ways in which the Voyager Record and the WIPP marker systems encapsulate not only explanations but also beliefs and judgements on nuclear technologies, space exploration and communication of factual knowledge across deep time. Scientists and their co-workers who designed these messages claimed that nuclear physics and technology are predictable, intrinsically mathematical, and comprehensible to any advanced civilization. Tracing the collaborative design of the Voyager Record and WIPP marker system reveals how nuclear science and its applications were framed not only as a legacy of humankind’s technological proficiency but also a threshold for self-annihilation or survival as a species capable of communicating with advanced civilizations and venturing to other worlds.