NASA’s rover land on Mars with a Secret Message. Only six people knew about the Encoded message before Thursday’s landing.
Mr. Ian Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with the idea two years ago. He said Turning parachute into a secret message was “super fun”.
NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message by a huge parachute, thanks to puzzle lover on spacecraft team.
In the orange and white strips of the 21-meter parachute, system engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things”. He included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarter at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Engineers wanted a unique pattern in the nylon fabric so they could see how the parachute was oriented during descent.
Only about six people knew about the encoded message before Thursday’s landing, according to Mr. Clark. They hold back until the parachute images came back before putting out a teaser during a televised news conference on Monday.
As for the GPS coordinates, the spot they reference is 10 feet (3 meters) from the entrance to JPL’s visitor center. “Dare Mighty Things” — a line from President Theodore Roosevelt — is a mantra at JPL and adorns many of the center’s walls.
The trick was “trying to come up with a way of encoding it but not making it too obvious,” Mr. Clark said. It took just a few hours for space fans to figure it out, with Mr. Clark admitting that “I’ll have to be a little bit more creative” next time.
Deputy project manager Matt Wallace promises more so-called hidden Easter eggs.
They should be visible once Perseverance’s 7-foot arm is deployed. In a few days and starts photographing when the rover is driving in a couple of weeks
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