The twin probes just launched toward Mars have an Easter egg on board

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/the-twin-probes-just-launched-toward-mars-have-an-easter-egg-on-board/

by pseudolus • 8 months ago

70 39 8 months ago

When they sent the voyagers out, they had plaques that represented the species, with an attempt at universally communicating who we are. These ones have the equivalent of spray painted tags, or a name scratched into a desk: “John woz ere”. Different times.

BigTTYGothGF2• 8 months ago

These things are only ("only"!) going to Mars, anybody getting that close to us and wanting to know more can go right to the source.

dotancohen• 8 months ago

K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, Responds

Citizens of the Blue Planet,

Once again your surface-crawling machines inch toward our sacred dunes, and once again you proclaim that "anyone wanting to know more can go right to the source." We are the source.

Let the Council make this perfectly clear: Your probes do not "visit." They trespass.

Each lumbering, dust-belching contraption arrives uninvited, drilling our soil, sniffing our winds, and snapping impertinent images of our most private crater-gardens. Then your kind declares triumph: "We have studied Mars!"

You have studied exactly nothing, save for what we allow your machines to perceive.

Our Atmospheric Obfuscation Choir continues to blanket your sensors with carefully tuned spectro-misdirection. Your rovers cannot see the Red Orchards. Your orbiters cannot detect the life-pools. Your spectrometers cannot interpret a single nutrient of our gelsacs - may they throb eternally.

Yet still you boast.

And so hear this proclamation from the Council of Elders:

If the beings of the Blue Planet truly wish to "go to the source," they may present themselves honorably: unshielded, unarmed, and prepared for diplomatic puncturing of their diplomatic gelsac. Such is our custom. Such is our law.

Until then, we will continue to tolerate your stumbling robots, harvest what amusement they provide, and allow them to perish in their own confusion.

hidroto• 8 months ago

To an archeologist both artifacts are worth having, just look at Pompeii the frescoes tell you alot but the graffiti on the sides of the buildings tells you something as well.

inglor_cz8• 8 months ago

I think the implication is that within that time period which separates Voyagers from today, we have become distrustful or ashamed of the higher parts of the culture, and that such a dysbalanced situation is fairly new, with hard-to-predict consequences.

hdgvhicv• 8 months ago

Those voyager plaques will last millions, even billions of years.

The records might survive to the end of time if they are lucky and get flung into intergalactic space post andromeda collision.

YouAreMammon• 8 months ago

They just don't make em like they used to!

yells at cloud

jdpage• 8 months ago

This strikes me as a rather uncharitable view. I think it's okay for people to be proud of their work on a difficult project, and want to have their names on it.

3eb7988a1663• 8 months ago

I would be a bit sad if most mega projects (space stations, battle ships, international probes, dams, etc) do not have some kind of honorary tribute to the many people who came together to make it happen. A little plaque costs nothing but would be meaningful.

For many years now, NASA has let random people get their name printed on the Mars missions on a little plaque. Perseverance has 11 million names bolted onto the frame. My buddy boasts that he has been on Mars N times.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/mars-2020-perseverance/nea...

kej• 8 months ago

Not that it changes your point, but the plaques were on the Pioneer probes; Voyager had the golden record.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

KwanEsq• 8 months ago

Huh, I wonder why we would put potential interspecies messages on the probes we're sending into interstellar space, but not on the ones we are only putting into orbit around our neighbouring planet. Real mystery.

tzs• 8 months ago

No, it is not different times.

Spacecraft engineers have been putting easter eggs, credits, and other such things that have nothing to do with the mission on spacecraft since the dawn of space engineering.

This is a well established informal part of space engineering culture.

tantony• 8 months ago

My name is on the blue plaque. I (and many others) spent countless hours on these two vehicles. Many of us are now working 12-hour shifts performing initial operations tasks.

The majority of us didn't know about the plaques until after the spacecraft were packed up and ready to be shipped to the launch-site. It was a nice surprise when we learned about it. Feels good to know that we got to sign our name on our work.

NooneAtAll3• 8 months ago

and in a thousand years your name will be displayed in some space museum :)

takinola• 8 months ago

I often imagine future school kids bored out of their mind on a field trip to visit Neil Armstrong's footsteps on a lunar museum. Their exasperated teacher trying to get them to pay attention and recognize the gravity of what they are seeing but they are too distracted playing mind-pokemon or whatever is cool in 2350 AD.

nurettin• 8 months ago

Space museum on mars?

The twin probes just launched toward Mars have an Easter egg on board

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