• By Niharika Sanjeeiv
  • Wed, 24 Feb 2021 02:09 PM (IST)
  • Source:JND
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New Delhi | Jagran Trending Desk: After making a historic landing at Mars, NASA's Perseverance Rover is again hitting the headlines after space enthusiasts decoded the secret message. Yes, you read it right, the huge parachute used by NASA's Perseverance rover contained a secret message and the man behind this was Ian Clark, a systems engineer. He used a binary code to spell 'Dare Mighty Things', not just this, he also included the GPS coordinates for the mission's headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California.

Ian Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with this idea two years ago when engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the parachute to know how it was oriented during descent. Calling it 'super fun', Clark said that he enjoyed turning it into a secret message, as per the reports.

He further added that next time he will be more creative with the secret messages because the space enthusiasts decoded the message in just a few hours.

 

As per reports, only six people knew about the secret message before the rover's landing on Mars.

Talking about why Clark choose 'Dare Mighty Things', a line from President Theodore Roosevelt, he said it is a mantra at JPL, which adorns many of the centre's walls. So the trick was to come up with a way of encoding it without making it less obvious. As for the GPS coordinates, it is only 10 feet from the entrance to JPL's visitor centre.

Deputy project manager Matt Wallace promised more so-called hidden Easter eggs. He said they should be visible once Perseverance's 7-foot arm is deployed in a few days and starts photographing under the vehicle, and again when the rover is driving in a couple of weeks.