Meet the people who decoded the secret message NASA sent to Mars... Engineers hinted they had hidden a code in the parachute that landed the Perseverance rover. Within hours, puzzle enthusiasts cracked it.
As NASA’s Perseverance rover fell through the Martian atmosphere last week, a video camera on the spacecraft captured the breakneck deployment of its parachute, which was decorated with splotches of reddish orange and white. Those splotches were a secret message.
During a news conference Monday, Allen Chen, the engineer in charge of the landing system, narrated what could be seen and learned in the slowed-down video. He added, cryptically and nonchalantly, that his team hoped to inspire others. “Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find for that purpose,” he said. “So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work.” Across the Atlantic
Ocean, Maxence Abela, a 23-year-old computer science student in Paris, realized what Mr. Chen was saying: The seemingly random pattern on Perseverance’s parachute contained a code. He called his father, Jerome, a software engineer at Google working in London, and the two set to solving it.
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The message on the inner three rings: “DARE MIGHTY THINGS.”
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The parachute was not the only fun that the builders of the Perseverance rover had.Eagle-eyed observers spotted a series of drawings that represented the five rovers NASA has sent to Mars, from the small Sojourner in 1997 to Perseverance now.
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Also on Perseverance are three small chips with the names of 10.9 million people stenciled on them, part of NASA’s efforts for the public to participate in its robotic missions. A more solemn addition was an aluminum plate that honors hardships of those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The practice of adding fun or solemn pieces to spacecraft is not new. In NASA jargon, it is called “festooning.” The two Voyager spacecraft that are now in interstellar space have discs full of images and sounds of Earth. Two earlier Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, had parts made from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, carries some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered that world.
On Perseverance, a few more surprises have yet to be revealed. “There’s some things on the front of the vehicle that we’ll have a chance to see once we deploy the robot arm,” Mr. Wallace said. He declined to say what they were or provide hints. “We’re going to let people enjoy the imagery when it comes,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/s...mid=tw-nytimes