This puzzle was based on real-world engineering! NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover was designed with a unique landing system. It deployed a parachute to slow its decent. Then it fired small rockets to hover above the surface and deploy a one-of-a-kind sky crane to lower the rover to the surface while those rockets were firing.
Watch the 2021-02-18 Perseverance Rover's decent and touchdown here: https://youtu.be/4czjS9h4Fpg
(The parachute deploys at 0:12, and the sky crane lowers at 2:45.)
Live video feed screen capture of the parachute:
CG mockup/simulation of the sky crane:
Live video feed screen capture of the sky crane:
Full-scale engineering model of Perseverance. It's big! About the size of a medium sedan.
Within hours of the live launch video feed, NASA/JPL engineer Adam Steltzner (lead engineer of the rover's Entry/Descent/Landing phase) confirmed the many posts shouting about it online:
https://twitter.com/steltzner/status/1364076615932645379
- The numbers in the outer ring are just binary.
- The rest is almost 7-bit ASCII.
1111111is just filler, not characters.- all 7-bit segments need to flip the leading bit from
0to1.
Crop original image:
Brighten:
Denoise:
Add grid template overlay:
Draw rings to separate sections:
Draw wedges to separate sections:
import signal
all_chars = []
def handler(signum, frame):
print(flush=True)
print("**********")
print(f"Decoded message: {''.join(all_chars)}")
print("Exiting.")
exit()
signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler)
while True:
binary_string = input("binary input: ")
new_char = chr(int(binary_string, 2) + 64)
all_chars.append(new_char)
print(new_char)Demo, asciinema recording:
Decoded sections:
