The parachute on which Perseverance landed on Mars contained a secret message

Systems engineer Ian Clark used binary code to write Dare Mighty Things in orange and white stripes

21-meter parachute, which opened atlanding of NASA spacecraft, NASA's Perseverance rover. It also included GPS coordinates for the mission's headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Clark, a crossword puzzle enthusiast, came up with the idea two years ago. 

According to him, only about six people knew aboutan encrypted message before the rover lands on Thursday. The engineers waited for the parachute image to be available on Earth before releasing a clue during a televised press conference on Monday.

According to Clark, space enthusiastsit took only a few hours to understand the encrypted message. Next time, he noted, “I’ll have to be a little more creative.”

Dare Mighty Things is a line from one of President Theodore Roosevelt's speeches. These words, which translate to “Dare Great,” are the mantra at JPL and adorn the walls of the NASA facility. 

This image is from the video provided byNASA shows a parachute deployed during the descent of the Mars Perseverance rover as it approaches the planet's surface on Thursday, February 18, 2021. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)

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