In images of Perseverance's descent to Mars, his parachute has irregular red and white areas. Their drawing may seem purely graphic. The teams used them to observe the deployment. But the same pieces of fabric carried a second piece of information, deliberately concealed in the color distribution.
NASA explains this game in an educational activity: the pattern uses binary coding, where positions represent values. By converting numbers into letters, we find the English words “Dare Mighty Things”, an invitation to dare great achievements. The design also contains the coordinates of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The message did not fly the parachute and was not a transmission from Mars. It had been prepared on Earth in an object subjected to severe technical constraints. The surprise lies in this double reading: analysts could examine an opening canvas, while other readers searched for a sentence.
What we know
A terrestrial message integrated into the pattern, without piloting function.
To go to the source
References consulted on 3 October 2026. Linked pages may be in another language.
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