A Telugu greeting recorded in 1977 is about to become part of the first human-made object to reach one light-day from Earth (Nov 18) | అంతరిక్షంలో తెలుగు గొంతు
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 carrying the Golden Record, a gold-plated copper disc meant as a message from Earth to anyone who might find it. It holds 116 images, sounds of Earth, 90 minutes of music, and spoken greetings in 55 languages.
One of them is Telugu, recorded at Cornell University by Prasad Kodukula:
"నమస్తే, తెలుగు మాట్లాడే జనముననించి మా శుభాకాంక్షలు."
(Greetings. Best wishes from Telugu-speaking people.)
Full article in Telugu, also you can hear the NASA's official greeting clip: https://muhurtham.date/voyager-telugu/
You can hear it on NASA's official SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/nasa/golden-record-telugu-greeting
Why Nov 18, 2026 matters: NASA calculated that at 11:46 AM IST (12:16 AM CST), Voyager 1 will be one light-day from Earth, about 25.9 billion km. A radio signal sent to it will take a full 24 hours to arrive. No human-made object has ever been that far away. It will never come back inside that distance.
So 49 years after it was recorded, those few seconds of Telugu are travelling farther than anything humans have ever made. 12 South Asian languages are on the record, and ours is one of them.
దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స, ఇప్పుడు విశ్వ భాషలందు కూడా! 🙏
I wrote a longer piece in Telugu about how the recording was made: [your article link]
Sources: NASA Science (Golden Record greetings), NASA's June 2026 milestone announcement via EarthSky. Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech.