Let's go back to the late 1970s. 40 years ago NASA launched what would become one of its most famous, one of its most important missions. What happened? Well, two Voyager spacecraft was sent off to do what had never been done before. Map the solar system and revolutionise our understanding of space. Three, two, one. We have ignition and we have nip-nip-nip. We have pushed off of the time the time they are carrying the first of two Voyager spacecraft. Hello from the Children of Planet Earth. To mark the 40th year of the mission, Ema Reynolds has made a film about the Voyager spacecraft and the people involved in this fascinating, good morning, Ema. How did you get involved in making a film like this? Because the access to footage and senasa that you must need, well it needs to be complete, doesn't it? How did you get that? We had to get all the approvals from NASA, but they were really on board from the start with the kind of film we wanted to make. There had never been, this is such an amazing, extraordinary adventure story. We had never seen on a big screen before, you know, there had been fine television documentaries made about it. We wanted to give it the big epic cinema visual story that treatment that the story deserved. So, you know, we approached them with that and wanted to talk to the scientists and engineers who were right at the heart of the mission and tell the story first time from their perspective. So, NASA, we're really excited about that story and we got all the approvals, you know, to get to the archives and talk to the people involved. And this is something you were passionate about doing. What was it about this story which captivated you so much? I've been in love with space and science, a bit of a space geek since I was a child. I wanted to be an astronaut, a little cliche, but I remember, in fact it was a BBC programme, The Sky at Night, during the 80s. So, Patrick Mording, a programme about Voyager 2, getting to Uranus, you know, the very first spacecraft ever to reach that amazingly distant world. I remember just being blown away by these amazing images of this pale blue planet and we'd never seen it close before. So, you know, just myself and my producer John, we've been obsessed with Voyager, we've been obsessed with space. And when Voyager 1 entered into stellar space in 2013, it was back in the news again, you know, after this long, 40-year journey, nearly 40-year journey. So, it was the perfect moment to try to tell the story. And Voyager 2 took over from Voyager 1 and just carried on going out, that's correct, isn't it? Yeah, Voyager 2 is the one that was able to, after the succeeded at Saturn, which was the Prime Mission, it was sent down then to Uranus and Neptune, which is the only spacecraft that has ever been to those planets. And the point was that it will keep on going, it will not come back because it will take a part of us, or at least a snippet of us then, into space, out into the universe. And a lot of the centres around a golden record, which I think is going to be explained quite clearly in this clip and then we'll talk to you about that. All of planetary exploration to me is a story about longing, the longing to understand the significance of our own existence. To say to the universe, we're here. Know us. You know, where are you? The people who actually did the science part of Voyager are always jealous and mad because the golden record gets more attention than all the wonderful things they did exploring the outer planets of the solar system, but the main attention goes to the golden record. Any kind of effort to contact the extraterrestrial intelligent life is more fascinating than knowing the chemical makeup of a mineral on Mars or something. Let's give it some more attention, shall we? Because I'm fascinated by it. So this is an actual golden record, which contains all these sounds and messages. And the idea is that it would be played by something, somebody, when they find it out there. But there's no method of playing it. So they included a cartridge and stylus in the package, in the actual, what they sent in the spacecraft, and also instructions as to how they might play it. And so that if they played it correctly, it would yield a certain image, and then they'd know it was turning at the same speed. So it's kind of mad because we couldn't even build a drone to ourselves, and that never made an alien. If I found a vinyl now, I don't think I'd be able to play it in my house. Yeah, so I don't think I'd quite want to. The vinyl's coming back. The vinyl's back for trendy people, not for me. Yeah, I'm with you. But so the difficulty in choosing what should be on that record, because there are something like, is it 50-odd greetings in different languages? But in order to give a snippet of who we are, what we are, to understand us, there was one piece of music on there. No, there's a 27 piece of it. I was 27, but one pop song. Well, only one pop song. Yeah, they said that they only had enough room for one which was. Johnny Be Good. Johnny Be Good. See, and I have just a no-elvis. No-elvis, no Bob Dylan. No, but they were Bowie. Bowie, yeah, you could be Bowie on that. I would, yeah. Well, one of the contributors in the film, Tim Ferriss said, you know, there's obviously a lot more great music that's not on the record than his on it, which would be a pretty pathetic planet if we only had 90 minutes of decent music. It's amazing. Do you think what's on that record is still representative of what we are as humans on planet Earth? I think it's a pretty good snapshot, you know, like they only had 90 minutes that they could fail, and they wanted to. Their principle was not just to show like American or contemporary music, so they had over 50% of the music is ethnic recordings, Provean, Panpipes, and Javanese, Gamalan. You know, so they had a very small amount of space they could fail, so they had Mozart and Beethoven and Bach. So there was arguments, obviously, as to what they could do. So we'd all argue, I'm sure, all night about what they should put on, but I think it's pretty good snapshot. And that's just good to be clear. Where is it now? So Voyager 1 is nearly, it's over 12 billion miles away, nearly 13, and Voyager 2, which is not yet left the solar system, is just about 11 billion miles away. So they're both kind of going into different directions. Voyager 1 has entered into Stellar space, which is an extraordinary historic achievement. When do we lose signal? Because we're still getting odd bits of data. We listen to them every single day. They send back signals every day, and in fact the signal takes over 18 hours from Voyager 1 to reach Earth. And it's very, very far away in the signal is very, very weak, but we will communicate with them partly, hopefully for another five, maybe even 10 years before they lose signal. When you hear those little signals, I bet that makes your heart beat faster. It's so beautiful, isn't it? It's so important. I mean, I think these two spacecraft will, in all likelihood, outlive humanity. They're going to be out there circling the Milky Way galaxy for millions, even billions of years, containing this little record of our existence. So it's extraordinarily poignant and romantic ideas, isn't it? That perhaps from where long gone, this little marker of our existence will be out there. Ema, thank you so much. It's a wonderful story, spectacular story. And Ema's film is called The Farthest. In a moment we're going to talk to Michelin-Star chef, who's also a judge on the BBC's new Primetime cookery show. First of all, let's have a last brief look at the headlines where you're watching us this morning, soon to say. Hello there, good morning. The Scottish Government's efforts to control, stop and prevent smoking is working, according to scientists and health experts. A review conducted by the University of Edinburgh and NHS Health Scotland says there's been a positive impact over the past five years. It found there's been a substantial decrease in the proportion of children exposed to second-hand smoke at home. But smoking continues to be a bigger problem in more deprived areas. Scotland is to benefit from the bulk of a £42 million funding package for farmers and crofters in remote and rural areas. The UK Government is to extend a support scheme while Brexit negotiations continue.