Web puzzlers crack code in Mars rover parachute
Scientists at Nasa hid a secret message in the supersonic parachute they used to land a carsized rover on Mars.
Video beamed back to Earth showed the Perseverance rover touching down on the Red Planet, including a view of the underside of the canopy. The fabric had an unusual red and white design which set armchair space experts, communicating on the internet, wondering if there was a hidden meaning.
Deciphering the message involved translating the colours of the parachute into binary code, and then letters. It emerged that each ring in the canopy spelled out a word.
The full message read ‘‘Dare mighty things’’ – the motto of Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory in California, where mission control was. The edge of the canopy, once decoded, showed a set of numbers representing mission control’s coordinates.
Adam Steltzner, Perseverance’s chief engineer, confirmed that the riddle had been solved.
The mismatched red and white stripes were the first clue. Puzzle solvers converted them into binary code – ones for red, zeros for white. The ones and zeros were then separated into
groups of 10, and each of sections had 64 added to it.
Each final number was made into a letter using the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which represents text in computers.
The Perseverance footage was the first high-quality video of a Mars landing. Matt Wallace, Perseverance’s deputy project manager, said he was inspired to cover the rover in cameras after watching his 11-year-old gymnast daughter do a backflip while wearing a sports video camera. ‘‘That’s what led to this entry, descent and landing footage.’’
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