Fans Cracked NASA’s Perseverance Rover Parachute Code Hours After Deployment
(https://www.reviewgeek.com/71998/fans-cracked-nasas-perseverance-rover-parachute-code-hours-after-deployment/)
( FEB 24, 2021; reviewgeek )
NASA’s perseverance rover touched down on the surface of Mars last week, giving us the first audio recording of the mysterious red planet. But who cares about the sound of Mars when there’s a mystery to solve? Hours after the Mars rover landed, internet detectives discovered and decoded a secret message hidden in the device’s oddly-patterned parachute.
The Mars rover parachute sports a few red and white columns separated by concentric rings. After establishing [the] code, Twitter user @FrenchTech_paf organized [it] into alphabetical letters. From there, FrenchTech_paf quickly uncovered the parachute’s message—“******************”
Read the rest (including the answer) from reviewgeek: Fans Cracked NASA’s Perseverance Rover Parachute Code Hours After Deployment
Did you figure it out or did you read the answer in the article? I haven't clicked through yet. One guess is that I could see the flat surfaces in each pair being half of an 8-bit byte - with red being 1 and white being 0 (or vice versa). Not sure about the ordering though...
I checked a couple, and they aligned with ASCII symbols instead of letters, so I'll have to keep thinking about it. Maybe I'll be lazy and just click through.
I first came across this in an article in my newsfeed that showed an annotated image, so I never had the chance to solve it. I suppose some folks don't get the point of codes or puzzles? You should keep trying if you haven't clicked through yet.
I got lazy and clicked through before you replied. Too bad, 'cause I was kinda-sorta almost on the right track. ; -)
That's why I said you should keep going!
Partial credit for a solid initial approach. Not to worry, I'm sure there will be more.
Oh, never mind, there's way too many "all zeros" or "all ones" for that scheme to be of any use.