NASA Marslander Perseverance parachute contained secret c …

The parachute on which rover Perseverance landed on Mars last week contained a secret message in binary code. That is code that uses two symbols, for example a 0 and a 1. In this case it was orange-red and white areas. Internet sleuths were able to crack the code within six hours.

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When NASA’s Perseverance rover opened its parachute, a secret code of red and white stripes emerged, NASA scientists confirmed. They challenged anyone to try to crack the code. Something internet sleuths already succeeded in after six hours.

The stripes, leaving from the center of the parachute, are in fact a message written in binary computer code, Adam Steltzner, Perseverance’s chief engineer, revealed. Each series of red and white stripes represents a single letter when read clockwise from the inner ring of the parachute to the outer ring.

Originally a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt, ‘Dare Mighty Things’ also graces the walls of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The trick was to “find a way to code it without it being too obvious,” explained systems engineer and puzzle fan Ian Clark.

It often happens that secret codes are used in space travel. But usually we don’t even see that.

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