{"id":2315,"date":"2012-08-13T16:03:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T21:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/?p=2315"},"modified":"2020-08-17T17:54:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T17:54:18","slug":"morse-code-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/2012\/08\/13\/morse-code-on-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"Morse Code On Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

From EDN<\/a>
\nDoug Grant- 08.10.2012 August 10, 2012<\/p>\n

Since everybody else is writing about the Curiosity Rover, I guess I need to write something about Mars\u2014like the fact that there\u2019s Morse code up there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure whether this got covered anywhere in the popular media, but the ARRL reported it a while ago. <\/p>\n

If you look carefully at the treads on the wheels of the rover vehicle, you\u2019ll notice the predominant, zigzag pattern, but you\u2019ll also see a section of tread on each wheel that\u2019s patterned with dots and dashes. The official word is that they serve as \u201cvisual odometry markers\u201d that tell the mission controllers how far Curiosity has roved and let them verify that the rover\u2019s wheels are indeed turning when the rover\u2019s telemetry says it is moving. But I think they\u2019re just a really, really cool hack that some ham on the development team at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena couldn\u2019t resist. The dots and dashes spell out \u201cJPL\u201d in the surface dust on the Red Planet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Detail of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover with tread pattern that will leave an impression on the Martian surface spelling \u201cJPL\u201d in Morse Code (\u00b7\u2014 \u00b7\u2013\u00b7 \u00b7-\u00b7\u00b7). Photo courtesy of NASA\/JPL.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, Morse code is alive and well. A while back, I had lunch with a professor and some of his grad students. The prof knew I was a ham and told his students that I could actually deode Morse code signals in my head. They were astonished, partly because they didn\u2019t know Morse was still being used anywhere, and partly because a human could copy it without a computer.<\/p>\n

Turns out there are a few other examples of Morse code that turn up in unlikely places. The next time you watch a baseball game being played at Fenway Park in Boston, look carefully at the white lines in the scoreboard on the left-field wall. You\u2019ll spot some dots and dashes hiding in plain sight in two of the vertical stripes. They spell out \u201cTAY\u201d and JRY,\u201d for Thomas A Yawkey and his wife, Jean R Yawkey; the Yawkeys were co-owners of the Red Sox for many years.<\/p>\n

There is also a \u201cMorse Code\u201d wine in the shops; the specific varietal is spelled out in dots and dashes on the label. The next time you\u2019re shopping for wine, bring along a ham to tell you what it is. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From EDN Doug Grant- 08.10.2012 August 10, 2012 Since everybody else is writing about the Curiosity Rover, I guess I need to write something about Mars\u2014like the fact that there\u2019s Morse code up there. I\u2019m not sure whether this got … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robot-news","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5295,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315\/revisions\/5295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}