Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs.
Advertisement
As Reddit user rdtwt1, who decoded the part of the parachute containing the motto, explained in a post, the phrase is embossed on the chute with red and white stripes as a stand-in for the binary characters 1 and 0 respectively. Each 10-stripe sequence adds up to a number value that can be converted to a letter in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) table of designations. Another redditor, tend0g, decoded the portion containing the JPL headquarters coordinates. The redditors weren’t alone. A Twitter user who also cracked the code posted an explanation adding that the large sections of 1s (all red) could be ignored. Another user added diagrams to chart out the numbers and their corresponding letters, showing that “dare” is written in the innermost circle, “mighty” in the middle circle, and “things” in the outer circle, with the coordinates lining the thin fringe at the very edge of the parachute.The phrase is displayed in several places around JPL, and was also included in one the first post-touchdown notes that was shared with the public on the mission’s Twitter page, one day after the rover nailed its landing. Given that NASA called Perseverance’s descent to Mars “the most dangerous landing yet” on the red planet, it’s fair to say that JPL lived up to its motto with this mission.