‘Dare Mighty Things’: Nasa hid secret code in Perseverance parachute canopy

The code was hidden in the canopy

Credit: AFP

As if landing a car-sized rover on Mars and filming it wasn’t complicated enough, Nasa hid a secret message in the parachute they used during the mission.

Astonishing video beamed back to Earth showed the Perseverance rover touching down, including an upwards view of the underneath of the parachute canopy.

The fabric had an unusual red and white design which set space fans wondering if there was a hidden meaning.

Once they deciphered it the message read "DARE MIGHTY THINGS" — the motto of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where mission control was.

In addition, the edge of the canopy, once deciphered, showed a set of numbers representing mission control’s coordinates.

Adam Steltzner, Perseverance’s chief engineer, confirmed the riddle had been solved.

It looks like the internet has cracked the code in something like 6 hours! Oh internet is there anything you can’t do? For those who just want to know: #Mars2020 #CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/yTJCEnbuLY

— Adam Steltzner (@steltzner) February 23, 2021

He said: "It looks like the internet has cracked the code in something like 6 hours!  Oh internet is there anything you can’t do?"

The mismatching red and white stripes were the first clue. 

Puzzle solvers then converted those into binary code — ones for red, zeros for white.

The ones and zeros were then separated into groups of 10, and each of those sections had 64 added to it.

Each final number represented a letter using the American Standard Code for Information Interchange [ASCII], which represents text in computers.

The "Dare Mighty Things" motto comes from a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1899.

Nasa’s parachute on which it was hidden was made in Tiverton, Devon by Heathcoat Fabrics.

Richard Crane, the company’s technical director, said: "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."