To seek out new life and new civilization...

I was just watching a progrm on History Channel about the Voyage spacecraft and its mission to take messages from earth to any life that might find it.
It carries the best of what was on earth at the time that it was launched in 1977...sounds of life from its beginnings in the oceans to people laughing and talking...greetings in 55 languages,pictures of life on earth...the accomplishments that we are most proud of....and music of all kinds.The sounds are carried in copper plated discs like large gramaphone recors with the required spindle mechanism and instructions on how to use it.Voyager is now the farthest manmade object from earth.
Another part of Voyager's mission was to take pictures of the planets Jupiter,Saturn,Neptune...but what caused my heart to skip a beat...was the last picture it took...of earth from the edge of the solar system....a tiny flickeering dot that you can barely see...I would hsve nissed it if it hadn't been clearly circled!Ssuch a small dot...that probably has no significance...except that it is the centre of our universe.
It has been nearly 30 years since Voyager began on its great adventure.It may be a very long time before it makes contact with any kind of alien civilization
Who knows, by then we may have invented faster crafts...capable of carrying human and made contact ourselves. And who knows, the space explorers of a couple of centuries hence may find Voyager...somewhere far away and recognise it for a long forgotten relic of a time long ago