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Dr. Thomas O Paine is the present NASA Administrator.
The disc, about the size of a 50-cent piece, is made of silicon -- a non-metallic chemical element found abundantly in nature and used widely in modern electronics.
Through a process used to make microminiature electronic circuits, the statements, the messages, and names were etched on the grey-colored disc. Each message was reduced 200 times to a size much smaller than the head of a pin (0.0425 x 0.055 inches) and appears on the disc as a barely visible dot.
NASA's Electronics Research Center at Cambridge, Mass., was assisted by the Sprague Electric Company's Semi-Conductor Division, Worcester, Mass., in preparing the historic disc.
In addition to the disc, Astronauts Neil A . Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., will also leave on the lunar surface an American flag and a plaque inscribed "Here men from the planet Earth/First set foot upon the Moon/July 1969 A.D./We came in peace for all mankind." The plaque will bear the names of Armstrong, Aldrin, the third Apollo astronaut,Michael Collins, and President Nixon, and will be attached to a leg of the descent stage of the lunar module.
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