Coming Down with a Code: Mars Sample Return Mystery Cache

The Mars Sample Return spacecraft was designed to land on Mars, retrieve a soil sample, and return it to Earth. After a nominal transit from Earth, the spacecraft successfully landed on the surface of Mars on September 11, 2012. The landing site in Gusev crater was carefully chosen to be near Columbia Memorial Station, in order to overlap with the exploration conducted by the Spirit Rover from 2004 to 2009. Unfortunately, all communication from the Mars Sample Return lander ceased the day after the landing (cause undetermined), and the mission was considered a failure.

Two days ago, a brief message on the Sample Return probe telemetry frequency was received by elements of the Deep Space Network. From the signal strength, direction of the signal and high upward shift in frequency, NASA determined that the probe was in space and rapidly approaching Earth! It is a complete mystery how the probe managed to launch itself and navigate back to Earth without commands or communication of any kind with ground controllers.

While statistical analysis of the mysterious message proved that the transmission was not noise and was not garbled, the message used an unfamiliar encoding scheme. Retired NASA scientists who were involved in earlier Mars exploration have suggested that the message may be in an octal code developed and used by the Planetary Society in 2004 for public affairs involvement with the Spirit Rover, as part of a program entitled 'Red Rover goes to Mars.' None of the scientists were able to recall how to decrypt this code, however.

As an expert solver of puzzle caches, NASA has asked you to examine archived files from the Planetary Society website to assist in decoding the message, and possibly determine the touchdown location of the sample return capsule. Refer to the links below to view the archived files.

If you've decoded the Sample Return message, it should be no problem to decrypt the message that is on the edge of the DVD bolted to the Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft on Mars. E-mail me the solution to log another find. Click the picture at the left for a larger image of the DVD.