Story at a glance
- On Monday, NASA released videos and audio of the Perseverance rover landing on the surface of the red planet.
- The video contained a detailed view of the rover’s decorative orange and white parachute that contained a message.
- The message, which was uncovered in a matter of hours, also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
NASA’s robotic rover that touched down on Mars last week contained a secret message that’s been decoded by space enthusiasts.
On Monday, NASA released videos and audio of the Perseverance rover landing on the surface of the red planet.
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The video contained a detailed view of the rover’s decorative orange and white pattern parachute that contained a message written in binary code spelling out “Dare Mighty Things.”
The phrase comes from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt, in which he said: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” The phrase is a popular mantra among the Perseverance team.
The message, which was uncovered in a matter of hours, also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The Associated Press reports systems engineer Ian Clark came up with the idea for the Easter egg two years ago as engineers wanted a pattern that would allow them to know how the parachute was oriented during the rover’s descent. Before savvy internet users decoded the message, just a handful of people who worked on the project knew about it.
It looks like the internet has cracked the code in something like 6 hours! Oh internet is there anything you can’t do? For those who just want to know: #Mars2020 #CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/yTJCEnbuLY
— Adam Steltzner (@steltzner) February 23, 2021
Perseverance landed on Mars on Thursday with the mission of exploring the planet’s surface in search of signs of ancient life. The car-sized robotic explorer is equipped with a drill and robotic arm, as well as several other sophisticated scientific tools that will enable it to collect rock and dirt samples that will be picked up by a future mission to Mars and brought back to Earth.
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