NICK EICHER, HOST: This was almost two weeks ago: NASA’s Perseverance closing in on Mars.
NASA: Navigation has confirmed that the parachute has been deployed and we are seeing significant deceleration.
Turns out NASA rocket scientists left a hidden message in that parachute.
CHEN: So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work.
Engineer Alan Chen laying down a challenge that a father and son in France would pick up.
Maxence Abela is an IT student in Paris. His dad Jerome is a software engineer. They put their heads together and deciphered the message scattered across the red and white parachute, hidden in binary code.
It took a few hours of figuring but eventually they figured it: A famous quotation by a former American president, “dare mighty things.” Here’s the younger Abela on GlobalNewsCanada:
ABELA: We found “dare mighty things.” That’s why. It’s very nice. It’s awesome.
It was a speech delivered in 1899 when Teddy Roosevelt was governor of New York aiming to inspire Americans to embrace strenuous effort and overcome hardship.
NASA’s Chen put a fine point on that.
CHEN: And we still get to “dare mighty things” together.
Like landing on Mars.
It’s The World and Everything in It.
