Documentary Description
n January 3, 2004, a compact rover named Spirit,
cushioned inside a pyramid of balloons, hurtled through the martian
atmosphere and crash-landed on the dusty surface of Mars. Minutes later,
Spirit sent its first message home. The elation of the assembled
scientists, along with the much more involved engineering story leading
up to the landing, were captured by NOVA producer Mark Davis in his
popular documentary MARS Dead or
Alive. That elation is the starting point for the sequel, Welcome
to Mars.Welcome to Mars follows
the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity from the second they crash-land
on the planet to many months into their ongoing mission. Davis covered
the story from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as it unfolded and
provided a unique, behind-the-scenes take on this voyage of discovery,
whose primary goal is to find evidence that liquid water once existed on
Mars. The mission has had its share of drama. The
first two weeks after Spirit’s landing were euphoric, with fantastic
new images arriving every day. But just a few weeks into its mission,
Spirit suddenly went silent… and then, inexplicably, started spewing
gibberish. For three agonizing days Spirit’s engineers worked around the
clock, trying to regain control of the unhinged rover. In the darkest
hour, many feared that Spirit was doomed. Then, just hours before
Opportunity began its own fiery plunge to the surface of Mars, engineers
finally discovered the problem—a simple memory overload—and saved
Spirit from an early death. The unfolding science
has been equally compelling. With Spirit back up and running, the
scientists turned their attention to the arrival of its twin,
Opportunity. After tearing through the martian sky and bouncing on the
surface for several minutes, Opportunity rolled into a small, shallow
crater at the site called Meridiani. Early the next day, the first color
postcard arrived, and the scientists were stunned to see an outcrop of
layered bedrock just a few yards away. Bedrock is the holy grail of
geologists, holding an unambiguous record of geological history. This
was the first martian bedrock ever photographed at close range
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