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by nihil75 1944 days ago
A little disappointing actually! I thought the pattern was a clever way to capture the status of the parachute in the event of failure, so if all they got was a garbled low-res image before the lander crashed to the surface they could deduce which section failed. Alas, it was just an easter-egg..
1 comments

> ... just an easter-egg ..

Not true, according to OP:

> Allen Chen revealed that there was a code hidden in the parachute, as well as the markings being useful for camera alignment.

Asymmetrical markings also allowed for measurement of parachute rotation during the operation.