Mars Rover’s Giant Parachute Carried Secret Message

This image from video made available by NASA shows the parachute deployed during the descent of the Mars Perseverance rover as it approaches the surface of the planet, on Feb. 18, 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message, thanks to a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team.

Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot parachute. He also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.