Title: Perseverance rover and its ingenious Easter eggs!
People love Easter eggs. That's why game developers almost always leave
little messages and surprises for players to find. But Easter eggs are not only for video
games. They can also be found in movies, television shows, and NASA space missions!
The last NASA mission direct to Mars was launched on July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral
(Florida). Its name was “Perseverance”, and it landed on Mars on Feb 18, 2021.
I guess you were watching the landing with your friends, colleagues or family!
The Perseverance rover will seek signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples
for a possible return to Earth.
NASA said there were all kind of Easter eggs hidden on Perseverance,
and now that the mission was accomplished, we can relax and take a look at them!
Follow me on this video to see if we can find secret Easter eggs left from the JPL team!
As we already said, on Feb 18, 2021, NASA successfully landed the Perseverance rover
on Martian soil. The mission went off without a hitch, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
began broadcasting the first images almost immediately.
However, some pictures and videos taken during the landing were not available until the last week.
As soon as we got the first images, we were introduced to a new world,
that looks pretty much like this: This was just the first of the
thousands of images taken by NASA's Rover during the first days of the mission.
1) Rover “Family Portrait” "Spirit, Opportunity, Intuition, Curiosity...
if you think about it all the names of Martian robots are qualities that we possess
as human beings. But so far the most important one was missing: Perseverance"
That’s what Alex Mather said, the guy who named the Perseverance rover.
This phrase seems to be imprinted in one of the plates aboard Perseverance,
a plate that is simply WONDERFUL! Compared to Mather’s sentence, here are ALL rovers
(so those robots with wheels, as opposed to Insight which is a lander): look at the beauty
and how it was evident the evolution from the first robot with wheels sent to Mars!
In 1997 Mars Pathfinder landed with the tiny Sojourner, a kind of radio-controlled car,
the first mission that made us understand that Mars would be explorable.
In 2004 the twins Spirit and Opportunity arrived, both with the first scientific instruments
of a certain level and that gave us unique information about the Martian geology and climate.
Both "died" due to the harsh Martian temperatures even though Opportunity
lasted the beauty of 15 years after a 42 km run, at the expense of only NINETY DAYS expected.
It was then the hour of a step forward and Curiosity in 2012 was our Martian jewel:
a new way to land, no longer with huge airbags but with parachutes and cranes, new tools, new rooms,
a new source of energy. Curiosity confirmed that Mars was a world, billions of years ago,
capable of potentially harbouring life. And here is Perseverance, an evolved brother
of Curiosity, with the aim of finding those traces of life that could have
developed billions of years ago. And finally, the evolution of the robotic species led to the birth
of the first alien helicopter, Ingenuity. The evolution continues, and sooner or later
the last one of that chain will have two legs, two arms and above all a brain. The human being.
2) Color Calibration Plaque
Since the time of the epic Pioneer and Voyager missions, we have tried to send into space
not only our igneous and our spirit of explorers but also messages that showed
that those lonely little robots were the legacy of an intellectually gifted species. Those robots,
the "pioneers" and the "travellers", carried a message that sounded more or less like this:
This is us, we are here and we are beings that live in peace and harmony>>.
Two worlds, a beginning. This time the message is directed to our interplanetary neighbour, Mars.
This is a plaque you see on Perseverance and it serves the rooms to calibrate the colours
also according to the time of the Martian day,
which can be guessed by the shadow projected by that stake in the centre.
Apart from the colours, what is interesting are the messages included in that plaque.
The rocket that goes from blue to red symbolizes our journey from Earth, the blue dot pale, to
Mars, the red planet. Then there are two human beings of different sex, naked, with a gentle
and peaceful greeting, the same present on the plates of the Pioneer or on the Golden
Record of Voyager. Then there is our story, the dinosaurs, the first plants, the cyanobacteria,
those small microorganisms that first populated our planet and probably also Mars, the DNA and
finally a map of the internal solar system. A message that once again symbolizes union,
this time going beyond our planet. Two planets so different now but sharing the same beginning:
the same formation, the same cloud of material, two worlds that had enough water to develop life,
even though Mars then became arid and inhospitable. But it remains our brother,
as brothers are all human beings on Earth. Or at least, that’s what we sent into space.
Something we don’t even believe in ourselves, I know, but those messages are bound to get lost
in the icy night of space and travel for millions or billions of years. They are our legacy to tell
the universe that we have been part of it for an infinitesimal fraction of its life.
3) Parachute
One video of the landing showed a perfectly framed shot of the Perseverance parachute unfurling.
The chute's red and white colouring seemed random, but JPL hinted that the team might
have left people secret messages to find. The parachute that helped the Perseverance
rover to successfully land unfolds in front of the "Martian" sun in another of the spectacular shots
taken by one of the chambers positioned on the descent stage and facing upwards during the
landing phase. The use of the parachute, which has a diameter of 21.5 meters, was essential to bring
the descent speed below 320 km/h, when the landing management could pass into the hands of Skycrane.
While working on the parachute design, engineers knew there would be a lot of
utility in creating a pattern. Patterns on parachutes help convey its orientation,
how it inflates and whether there is any damage after inflation. Checkerboard patterns can be
confusing, so Clark wanted to use something less uniform and more distinct. But the team
members decided to have a little bit of fun. He thought about encoding words using binary code.
But what would the message be? In the end, they opted for the sentence: "Dare mighty things."
The motto, taken from a Theodore Roosevelt speech, was in buildings all across the JPL campus.
Clark, who has been at JPL since 2009, worked on the parachute for years, said:
"Week after week, I definitely never got tired of reading 'Dare Mighty Things.
And it's not just the phrase, but it's even the broader context of the speech. This great
inspirational message really represented the culture of JPL and NASA as a whole."
The team also included the GPS coordinates for JPL on the outer ring of the parachute.
What a better message, in fact, for a space mission that has caught the attention
of the whole world with an undertaking never before attempted:
landing on Mars with an accuracy of just 5 meters thanks to the help of artificial intelligence.
But above all, Perseverance’s ultimate ambition is grandiose: to find traces that can indicate
the presence of life in the red planet’s past. A challenge that NASA really took seriously, sending
to Mars the most advanced rover ever realized. We still don’t know what Perseverance will find
in his (hopefully) long journey between the regolith and the Martian rocks.
But whatever he discovers we could say, perhaps with a touch of pride: «I was there».
Go, Persy, DARE GREAT THINGS and make us feel proud of you.
"Before you continue watching this video, please like or dislike the video so that we
can continue to improve and make these videos better for you the viewer. Plus, be sure to
subscribe to the channel by clicking the bell so that you don't miss ANY of our weekly videos!"
4) Covid memorial One of the saddest – yet
meaningful – Easter egg carried by Persy was the aluminium covid-memorial plaque.
This aluminium memorial plaque bears the symbol of the Rod of Asclepius – the ancient Greek symbol of
healing and medicine – to commemorate the virus's impact that could have set the mission off course,
and pay tribute to "the perseverance of healthcare workers around the world."
Challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic had the team worrying they may miss their launch window,
but thanks to the professionalism at NASA and the safety precautions taken,
Perseverance launched in July 2020. Nonetheless, the plaque commemorating the hard work of medical
professionals worldwide was added to the rover. Matt Wallace, the mission’s deputy project manager
at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the plaque recognizes the sacrifices that
have been made by medical workers — and also by members of the mission team, who had to go
to extraordinary lengths to keep the $2.4 billion project on track for launch as early as July 20.
5) Morse code plaque
If you're reading this you may be one of the nearly 11 million people
who sent their names to Mars. In fact, In addition to the COVID-19 plaque,
Perseverance is carrying a laser-etched plate that bears nearly 11 million names
submitted by the general public during NASA’s “Send Your Name to Mars” campaign.
Each name was individually stencilled in 75-nanometer-high letters
onto the three silicon chips on the top left by electron beam,
along with the essays of the 155 finalists in NASA's "Name the rover" contest. You may not know,
however, that the words "Explore as One" are written in Morse code in
the Sun's rays on the placard, connecting Earth on the left and Mars on the right.
We are a weird form of life. An insanely curious form of life.
A form of life that sends rovers on other planets and has fun in doing so.
We are beautiful. We are... humans.
"This video ends here! Thanks for watching everyone! Are you in love with Perseverance? What
do you think it's the most beautiful easter egg? Is there anything more you want to hear? Let us
know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on the channel!"