Mars rover Perseverance’s giant parachute carried a secret message from NASA

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 — and space lovers solved it within hours.

Engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the orange and white stripes of the 21-metre nylon parachute so they’d be able to see how it was oriented during Perseverance’s descent to the Red Planet.

Systems engineer and crossword hobbyist Ian Clark came up with the idea two years ago to use a binary code to spell out a hidden message: “Dare Mighty Things”.

It’s a line from former US president Theodore Roosevelt and a mantra of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is running the Perseverance project.

The message adorns many of the walls of JPL’s mission…