Posted: 02/06/2006

Roving Mars

(2006)

by Leah Bartholomay

What do you get when you mix propulsion, power, telecommunications, avionics, and software engineering into one huge experiment? Two unique land rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, over 150 million miles away, crawling over a planet which most of us have only dreamed of, Mars. Walt Disney Pictures presents, Roving Mars. This documentary, directed by George Butler and produced by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Frank Marshall, focuses on the precision needed to execute such a challenging and demanding mission.

Landing the Rovers on Mars is similar to “shooting a basketball from Los Angeles to New York and having it swoosh through the basket without even hitting the rim.” The rovers set out to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars by evaluating the geological formations on its surface.

Like two infants learning to adjust to the new world around them, the two Rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to uncover many clues of Mars haunting past. Amazing images of perfectly rounded rocks looking like beads, and large craters in the land which once could have held water, are indescribable. To finally see the distant face of Mars up close is exhilarating.

After much analysis of the geological setting on Mars, it is understood that this planet now covered in volcanic ash, and once flowing with water, at one point could have been eerily similar to Earth. Is this Earth’s forecasted future? And with that stated, is there more life out in the endless universe? This documentary, with the help of NASA’s long-term Mars Exploration Program, gives us insight to the future, and clues to the past leaving us with breathless imagery of a planet once portrayed as a Martians playground, now seen by our own eyes as a planet which very well could have been like our own.

Leah Bartholomay is a documentary filmmaker in Chicago.

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