NOVA - Mars, Dead or Alive
by Nova
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Don Wescott, Peter Thomas (VI), Stacy KeachDirector: Nova
Brand: Wgbh Wholesale
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 60 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-03-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: PBS
Movie Reviews of NOVA - Mars, Dead or Alive
Movie Review: The science and engineering behind the Mars rovers
Summary: 5 Stars
Mars Dead or Alive tells the story of the two rovers, the Spirit and the Opportunity, that landed on Mars in January 2004 to undertake advanced geological studies and to seek evidence of past water on the planet's surface. This Nova documentary does not cover the mission itself, merely the preparation and execution of the rover project. As such, it will primarily be of interest to science geeks.
As far as I'm concerned, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the only NASA-related agency that has any credibility whatsoever nowadays; basically, the only real successes of the past decade or more are attributable to JPL. This documentary is somewhat revealing in regard to NASA as a whole, if you ask me. When you look at the Mars rover project, you see scientists and engineers rushing to meet a deadline, foregoing certain tests because of time constraints, having to react on the fly to unexpected problems, and allowing NASA's "go with what you know" philosophy to trip them up on matters that would seem to be comparatively simple. Here's an example: the Rover missions were initially designed to use the same type of parachute and air bags as that of the earlier Pathfinder mission to Mars. Team members then watched in shock as both of these critical mission components failed miserably in testing. Of course those tests failed - for the simple reason that the new rovers were a good fifty pounds heavier than the Pathfinder. So it is that we see engineers and scientists sweating bullets trying to fix mission-killing problems mere weeks before the deadline, all because they failed to make adjustments according to weight.
I don't mean to criticize the rover team members too harshly, though. They did, as this documentary shows us, really pull together to correct their mistakes and figure out new solutions to unexpected problems - and, as we know, both Spirit and Opportunity landed safely on Mars and did the jobs they were intended to do. Mars Dead or Alive does a good job of posing the challenges to the mission and walking us through most of the process. The rovers themselves are immensely complicated little bots armed with a portable geological lab, stereoscopic eyes, and over a thousand units of delicate hardware. Somehow, these things had to survive a landing on Mars, basically wake themselves up, call Earth, and then ease out onto the surface and begin serious scientific work. Even the choice of landing sites was complicated, for a number of reasons. The scientists dearly wanted to land in Gusev Crater, which they believed could possibly be a dry lake bed, and the engineers had to pulls feats of Montgomery Scott-like proportions to make this possible. The parachute and inflatable bags around the rover had to prove themselves able to withstand the possible winds at that location - and that took some real doing since both components miserably failed their initial tests.
Unless you're a NASA cynic like me (and I hate being such a cynic, as my fondest dream as a child was to work for this very agency), Mars Dead or Alive tells a pretty inspirational story - men and women coming together, plowing through many obstacles, and succeeding in a pretty glorious mission to Mars. The folks at JPL are really the best in the business - still, I think the conditions under which this Mars project proceeded are somewhat revealing of NASA's problematic culture. That, in my mind, makes Mars Dead or Alive a doubly instructive documentary.
Summary of NOVA - Mars, Dead or Alive
Inside NASA?s risky field trip to the Red Planet.Two-thirds of all spacecraft previously launched to Mars never reached their destination. Now, in a pioneering and risky mission, twin rovers named Spirit and Opportunity hurtle toward Mars at 12,000 miles per hour, with Spirit scheduled to touch down first. In the final "six minutes of terror" a parachute will open, giant protective airbags will inflate around the lander, and retrorockets will fire for a few seconds before Spirit is cut loose, bouncing its way to what everyone hopes will be a safe landing. To survive, Spirit will have to function perfectly. It will also have to be lucky, since there's no way of knowing when a sharp rock or a gust of wind will ruin your day on Mars. Only then will Spirit be able to roll off the lander and begin its mission as a robot geologist, searching for clues that can tell us whether this harsh and barren planet was ever a place that could have supported life. Join NOVA for a tense and dramatic behind-the-scenes chronicle of the $820 million Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project, developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Beginning a year before launch, NOVA's cameras follow MER scientists and engineers through a gauntlet of potentially fatal problems such as shredding parachutes, punctured airbags, and short circuits, any one of which could scuttle the mission before the rovers ever reach the launchpad. Then, seven months after launch, re-join NOVA and the NASA team in mission control for the final nail-biting minutes of the journey, as Spirit successfully lands on Mars and begins sending back its first spectacular images of the Martian landscape.
Special DVD features include: bonus video segment featuring Donna Shirley of NASA; interview with Steve Squyres; Anatamony of a Rover activity; materials and activities for educators; a link to the NOVA Web site; scene selections; closed captions; and described video for the visually impaired.
On one DVD5 disc. Region coding: All regions. Audio: Dolby stereo. Screen format: Letterboxed.
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