Welcome to the Museum of Cosmic Curiosities, a growing collection of strange objects, forgotten artefacts and obscure relics from the history of astronomy and space exploration. Some are profound, some are absurd, but they all have a story to tell.
🏛️ Exhibit 032 - The Martian Morse Code Wheels
Easter eggs aren’t just for the Spring.
Disney loves hiding hidden messages in films, Lego often does it with their brick sets and Taylor Swift is a master at it.
So too are the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
When it came to designing the wheels of the Curiosity Mars rover, they hid a secret in the tyre treads.
As Curiosity trundles across Mars, it imprints the letters JPL in Morse code into the dusty Martian surface.
Let’s face it, it’s partly about showing off.
But there’s also a serious side to it. By counting the number of JPLs left in the red dirt, the engineers can measure how far the rover has travelled.
🏛️ Browse all exhibits in the Museum of Cosmic Curiosities here
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I never knew this, very cool!