What Latin phrase was sent in Morse code on the Golden Record?

The Latin phrase sent in Morse code on the Voyager Golden Record was “Per aspera ad astra.”

The phrase is commonly translated as “through hardships to the stars,” or “through difficulties to the stars.” It appears in the record’s “Sounds of Earth” section, alongside natural sounds, human noises, spoken greetings, and music from different cultures and eras.

Morse code was an especially distinctive choice because it does not depend on a spoken human language. The record’s creators, led by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan, included symbolic and scientific material intended to communicate something about Earth to an unknown listener. The record also contains 116 encoded images, greetings in 55 languages, and diagrams explaining how to play it.

The phrase is easy to confuse with “Sic itur ad astra,” another Latin expression meaning roughly “thus one goes to the stars.” That wording was not the Morse-code message on the Voyager record. “Per aspera ad astra” is also used as a motto by various organizations, including the U.S. state of Kansas and the U.S. Air Force.