A Truly Awesome Scientific Feat
Roving Mars’ main feature includes some great HD footage and interviews of various folks at NASA who worked on the rover project. There is also lots of great footage of the rovers’ construction in the immaculate clean rooms wherein dozens of engineers and scientists expended thousands of hours. As we all know now, the work paid off; the rovers are still functioning on Mars, exceeding NASA’s own predictions by many months already.
The main feature does a fine job of presenting the trials, failures, and ultimate success of the project. Hearing the details from those that worked on it first hand is a definite plus and some of the footage that was captured is really quite remarkable. Understandably, there is a fairly significant amount of computer animation used to show viewers what the rovers’ journeys through space and down to Mars would have looked like. It’s still quite awe-inspiring to me that such incredible sensitive devices could not only be created, but launched and made to land safely on something so far away as Mars. In fact, my favorite part of the feature was the footage, animation, and explanations provided in regards to the rovers’ landing system, which included three jets to slow its fall to the Martian surface as well as lots of supped-up airbags that expanded before it hit the surface, allowing it to bounce and roll to a stop. The footage of the NASA crew in the control center after the first landing was quite suspenseful, even though you already knew what was going to happen (i.e., a successful landing and an established radio connection back to Earth).
So the main feature is definitely nice, it’s just very short, ending in forty quick minutes. The disc does also include a couple of extra features, however. The first is “Mars – Past, Present, And Future,” which is right about twenty-five minutes. It’s kind of a making of or a behind-the-scenes feature; basically some of the engineers who worked on the rover project offer some of their early memories of space exploration and the director of the production, George Butler weighs in with his very low, whispering voice. About halfway through the feature the focus becomes centered around the rover project and so I felt like some content was reused a bit and that took down the value of this feature.
The other feature is quite entertaining; more so than the actual feature in my opinion, not to mention it’s about twelve minutes longer. Entitled “Mars & Beyond,” this is actually a cartoon from 1957’s Disneyland TV show. It sports some great, imaginative animation, that classic Narrator voice I haven’t heard in years, and is simply entertaining and educational throughout.