Did you know that the huge parachute used by NASA's Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message? Yes, making this massive event more fun a fun secret message was added by a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team and it is now going viral.  Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out "Dare Mighty Things" in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot (21-metre) parachute.Yes, brilliantly done by Clark, this may not be the only secret puzzle that the whole mission carries.

Mars Rover's Giant Parachute Secret Message DECODED!

He revealed how it also includes the GPS coordinates for the mission's headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.  He used the phrase "Dare Mighty Things" as it was a line made famous by President Theodore Roosevelt, and adorns the walls of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The GPS coordinates which is 10 feet (3 metres) from the entrance to JPL's visitor centre.

"Postcards from a Red Planet: Here's where to see the latest views from @NASAPersevere throughout the mission: https://go.nasa.gov/3e8QpSt as well the latest raw images straight from the rover: https://go.nasa.gov/3soJ2gx #CountdownToMars," NASA Mars tweeted:

The secret message was discreetly only disclosed to six people before Thursday's landing. He was quite bugged out by the fact that space fans figured it out in a couple of hours. "Next time, he noted, I'll have to be a little bit more creative," Clark said. However, this seems to be only one out of many secret messages that NASA will give out for space fans to decipher. Deputy project manager Matt Wallace promises that more such hidden ' Easter eggs' will be visible once Perseverance's 7-foot (2-metre) 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.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 24, 2021 03:08 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).