Netizens have been quick to decipher the hidden message inscribed on the parachute that helped the Perseverance rover land on Mars last week. What the message says? In essence, it is a well-known NASA motto.
Six hours it took the most avid NASA followers to find the secret message. It is: 'Dare Mighty Things', the motto of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which was encoded in the red and white pattern of the parachute.
The stripes, radiating from the center of the parachute in a seemingly random pattern of concentric circles, actually spell out a message written in binary code, in machine language.
The first to solve it
The first solution published online appears to have been IT student Abela Paf on Twitter. The message, he said, had been decoded by him and his father, who identified that the stripes were arranged in concentric rings that encoded a 10-bit pattern.
The outermost ring of the parachute also contains a set of coordinates: 34 ° 11'58 "N by 118 ° 10'31" W – the location of the JPL headquarters in California.
Will there be more hidden codes in Perseverance? We do not rule it out, as NASA has a tradition in this type of inclusions.
