NASA Perseverance rover parachute contained a hidden message

The parachute that helped land NASA’s rover on the Red Planet contained a hidden message for those back on Earth.

As a 21-metre parachute unfurled to slow the descent of NASA’s Perseverance rover onto Mars last week, a hidden message helped it touch down safely.

Spelled out in binary code using orange and white strips around the inside of the parachute is the message: “Dare Mighty Things”.

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A screen grab of a video showing the parachute as the Perseverance rover descends. Picture: Lizabeth Menzies/NASA/AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron watches the rover touch down at the French National Center for Space Studies (CNES). Picture: Christophe Petit Tesson/AFP

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Around the outer circle, the same code is used to reference the GPS co-ordinates of the mission’s headquarters in Pasedena, California, where the “Dare Mighty Things” line borrowed from US President Theodore Roosevelt adorns the walls.

The reason for the special parachute wasn’t just for an inside joke for the people who made it happen.

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The first images NASA’s Perseverance Rover beamed back from Mars. Picture: NASA/AFP

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Spelling out the messages in binary code helped create a unique pattern that would allow engineers to identify how the parachute was oriented as it descended towards the Red Planet’s surface.

The encoded message has been attributed to NASA engineer Ian Clark.

Soon after images of the parachute were released, internet sleuths on Reddit went to work figuring out what it was, with one programming a code that could decipher it within hours.

Here's the explanation : pic.twitter.com/DpbwEXvJcB

— Abela_Paf (@FrenchTech_paf) February 22, 2021