The Parachute Message
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The Parachute Message
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: The Parachute Message
#2I wonder how much more expensive was it to create the parachute with the code.
Re: The Parachute Message
#3I wonder how much more expensive was it to create the parachute with the code.
[deleted]
Re: The Parachute Message
#4I wonder how much more expensive was it to create the parachute with the code.
Probably not a lot. I believe they needed to create a pattern on the parachute anyway for tracking orientation and inflation.
Re: The Parachute Message
#5Here's where the coordinates on the outer rim point to (For the lazy) https://goo.gl/maps/MCqYxngeQLJRMNeK7
Re: The Parachute Message
#6Here's where the coordinates on the outer rim point to (For the lazy) https://goo.gl/maps/MCqYxngeQLJRMNeK7
DARE MIGHTY THINGS
Re: The Parachute Message
#7The British company that made the parachute's fabric has a great little piece about it here [0]. In 15 years they went from a demo at a symposium in the US to a canopy that could achieve a 98% reduction in the re-entry speed of a massive payload.
Re: The Parachute Message
#8official word: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/mars-decoder-ring
Re: The Parachute Message
#9JPL has a history of hiding messages like this. One of the rovers leaves tracks that spell "JPL" in morse code. I think it's all kind of fun.
Re: The Parachute Message
#10Here's where the coordinates on the outer rim point to (For the lazy) https://goo.gl/maps/MCqYxngeQLJRMNeK7
Interestingly, their hands were somewhat tied when it came to coordinate system precision [1] because they had eight 7-bit words to encode with data.
They couldn't say "34.20 N 118.17 W", which would indicate they're talking about the whole campus and industrial park it's in, because that's only 6 words.
Instead, by defining it to a precision of one arcsecond, they imply that JPL is located within the 30-by-25-meter rectangle [2] between 34°11'58.5"N 118°10'31.5"W and 34°11'57.5"N 118°10'30.5"W, which is basically a turnaround and associated parking lot island.
[1] Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2170/ [2] Rectangular [3] because the circle around the earth at higher latitudes is smaller than the circle at the equator. [3] OK, approximately rectangular. It's rectangular on a Mercator projection map!