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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

'Dare mighty things': hidden message found on Nasa Mars rover parachute:

Internet sleuths claim to have decoded a hidden message displayed on the parachute that helped Nasa's Perseverance Rover land safely on Mars last week. They claim that the phrase "Dare mighty things" – used as a motto by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory – was encoded on the parachute using a pattern representing letters as binary computer code.

Reddit users and social media posters on Twitter noticed that the red-and-white pattern on the parachute looked deliberate, and arrived at the result by using the red to represent the figure one, and the white to represent zero.

[...] The challenge had been set by Nasa itself. While the pattern has a scientific purpose – it allows mission control to see the angle the parachute has deployed at and whether it has got twisted – during a live stream discussing the landing, one Nasa commentator said: "Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find. So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work."

Nasa has previously used the phrase in association with its Mars missions. In 2013 it issued a trailer video of the Curiosity rover mission entitled "Dare mighty things". The current mission has also used the phrase in tweets marking the successful landing.

[...] The company's technical director, Richard Crane, told the BBC: "It is an incredibly emotional moment, when you know that millions of people around the world are holding their breath, waiting for news of a successful touchdown, and that part of that success is down to the efforts of our fantastic team here in Tiverton."

Direct link to parachute deployment from NASA.

Original Submission