--- title: "NASA Hid a Clever Secret Message in Its Mars Rover’s Parachute" description: "NASA engineers managed to hide a clever message in the red and white colors of its Perseverance rover's parachute that it used to successfully land on Mars." date: "2021-02-23" modified: "2021-02-23" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-hid-clever-secret-message-mars-rovers-parachute" categories: - "Astronomy" - "Mars" - "NASA" - "Space" tags: - "JPL" - "mars" - "NASA" - "perseverance" - "the digest" --- # NASA Hid a Clever Secret Message in Its Mars Rover’s Parachute ![NASA engineers managed to hide a clever message in the red and white colors of its Perseverance rover's parachute that it used to successfully land on Mars.]() *\Image: NASA\* ## Parachute Code The engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) managed to hide a clever message in the red and white colors of the [Perseverance]() rover's parachute that it used to [successfully land]() on Mars late last week. An [incredible video]() uploaded by NASA showed Perseverance screaming through the thin Martian atmosphere below before opening its parachute and [deploying its Skycrane]() to gently lower the car-sized rover to the Martian surface. NASA [teased]() that there was a secret message encoded in the various red and white stripes of the rover's parachute — and luckily, French computer science student Maxence Abela and his father have now decoded it. https://twitter.com/FrenchTech_paf/status/1363965938421411841?s=20 ## Dare Mighty Things The message reads "Dare mighty things," a popular JPL slogan. The outer rings are the GPS coordinates of the JPL offices in Pasadena, California. "There are four groups, each one is built from a circle, starting from the center circle," Abela wrote in a tweet explaining JPL's code. "Each binary number encodes a position in the alphabet, starting at 1." Here's a visual explainer by Twitter user Meithan West: https://twitter.com/meithan42/status/1364087439174766598 TikTok user and scientist Emily Calanderelli also took the time to distill the dense explanation into a fun video, in case you're (understandably) confused. https://twitter.com/TheSpaceGal/status/1364089524922372096 It's not the first encoded message of its kind, as *CNET* points out. The wheels of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover are designed to [spell out "JPL" in Morse code]() as it makes its way across the desolate surface of Mars. **READ MORE:** [NASA hid secret messages in the Perseverance parachute]() \[*CNET*\] **More on Perseverance:** *[NASA Releases Incredible Panorama of Mars Rover’s Landing Site]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()