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It didn't take the internet community long to notice the strange pattern on Perseverance's parachute as it landed.
The red and white stripes are not evenly arranged.
Some users suspected: The unusual pattern can't be a coincidence, can it?
Right!
The US space agency Nasa has hidden an encrypted message in it.
"Perseverance" approaching Mars on February 18, 2021
Source: AP
It makes sense that the parachutes with which NASA's spaceships and capsules float to Earth or another planet are striped in red and white.
The eye-catching pattern makes it easier to see whether the shades have fully unfolded and are not twisted.
Already during the live broadcast of Perseverance's landing, a NASA commentator suggested, according to the British newspaper Guardian:
Sometimes we leave messages behind in our work that others can seek.
So we invite all of you to try your hand at and show what you have found.
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In fact, it only took a few hours for resourceful internet users to crack the message.
The open braking parachute does not say “We come in peace” or “May the force be with you”.
The chaotically arranged stripes are binary code, as users write in a Reddit forum.
Red corresponds to 1 and white to 0. The three inner rings of the total of four rings on the parachute each contain a word.
This photo of Mars was put together from several individual images that Perseverance took
Source: via REUTERS
The message can be decrypted with the so-called ASCII code (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).
To do this, divide the zeros and ones into groups of ten and add 64. The result corresponds to a letter: the number 65 to an A, the 90 to a Z.
For example: Seven white stripes, one red stripe, and two more white stripes make 0000000100, the binary for four.
If you add 64, you get 68, the ASCII code for the letter D.
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Accordingly, the hidden message in the Perseverance parachute is:
"Dare Mighty Things" - this NASA motto is roughly "Dare to do big things" in German.
The code on the outermost, fourth ring of the screen is not a word, but the combination of digits 34 11 58 N 118 10 31. These are the geographic coordinates of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, where Perseverance is mostly was developed and built.
Users explain their solutions on Twitter:
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Nasa engineer Adam Steltzner finally confirmed the Easter Egg in a tweet:
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That message isn't the only special detail about Perseverance.
On the top of the vehicle there is a “family portrait” of all previous Mars rovers: Depicted are Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance themselves, as well as the Ingenuity helicopter that was brought along for the current mission.
Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Also on board Perseverance are special microchips on which 10.9 million names and 155 essays are stored.
These were sent to NASA as part of competitions.
There is also a reference to the global corona pandemic on the vehicle: In order to remember the effects of Covid-19 and in honor of the tireless work of the medical staff, the Aesculapian staff is depicted on an aluminum plate that is attached to Perseverance , the ancient Greek symbol of healing and medicine.
Asklepios, the god of medicine in Greek mythology, is said to have always had an Aesculapian snake with him, which wrapped around his walking stick
Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Hidden messages and symbols have a tradition at NASA
The wheels of Perseverance's predecessor Curiosity, for example, left the letters "JPL" in Morse code on the floor of Mars, with which NASA referred to its rover developer Jet Propulsion Laboratory.