What's the secret code for talking to spacecraft?


Amazing Fact:
In sending us the beautiful, true-color planet pictures below, the spacecraft communicated using only ones and zeroes!
Pass your mouse over the pictures to see what the raw data looked like before processing.
All these pictures were made by the Voyager spacecraft. Find out more amazing facts about their Grand Tour of the outer planets between 1979 and 1989.

This is Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun, and its moon Io.

This is majestic Saturn, sixth from the Sun, with its jaunty rings. If you look very closely, you can see four of Saturn's moons, too.

This is a montage of all four of the outer planets visited by Voyager 2. They are (front to back, farthest from Sun to nearest) Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter.