Roving Mars Page #5

Synopsis: A pair of uncrewed vehicles transmit images from Mars.
Director(s): George Butler
Production: Buena Vista
  1 win & 1 nomination.
 
IMDB:
7.4
Metacritic:
58
Rotten Tomatoes:
70%
G
Year:
2006
40 min
$9,959,080
Website
65 Views


01:
09:47,746 -- 01:09:51,273

but what we found was lava -

volcanic rock,

303

01:
09:51,350 -- 01:09:55,411

The sedimentary rock must be there,

but it's been buried under the lava,

304

01:
09:55,487 -- 01:09:58,217

and we couldn't get to it,

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01:
09:58,290 -- 01:10:01,487

When we realized that we hadn't landed

on the stuff we came for,

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01:
10:01,560 -- 01:10:03,960

we decided

we had to go someplace else,

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01:
10:04,029 -- 01:10:07,260

A mile and a half away,

there's this spectacular range of hills

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01:
10:07,332 -- 01:10:09,493

called the Columbia Hills,

309

01:
10:09,568 -- 01:10:14,972

You gotta remember ''Spirit'' was designed

to go only 600 yards over its lifetime,

310

01:
10:15,407 -- 01:10:20,208

so we set out for those hills

not knowing if we'd ever make it,

311

01:
10:21,446 -- 01:10:26,907

Meanwhile, on the other side of Mars,

''Opportunity'' was about to land,

312

01:
10:51,343 -- 01:10:53,470

When ''Opportunity'' landed

at Eagle Crater,

313

01:
10:53,545 -- 01:10:58,107

it was a 300 million-mile

interplanetary hole in one,

314

01:
10:59,885 -- 01:11:03,377

We rolled to a stop

right in front of layered bedrock,

315

01:
11:03,455 -- 01:11:05,821

Bedrock is geologic truth,

316

01:
11:05,891 -- 01:11:10,328

''Opportunity'' landed

in front of a Martian history book,

317

01:
11:16,101 -- 01:11:19,161

When we drove off the lander

and looked at the soil in front of us,

318

01:
11:19,237 -- 01:11:23,173

we saw that it was littered with

what looked like little round beads,

319

01:
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an uncountable number

of little round things,

320

01:
11:27,245 -- 01:11:31,682

We took out our microscope, we reached

out and looked at the soil in detail,

321

01:
11:31,750 -- 01:11:34,446

and the picture that came down

was astounding,

322

01:
11:34,519 -- 01:11:37,010

They were perfect spheres,

323

01:
11:37,088 -- 01:11:40,148

l will remember for the rest of my life

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01:
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how l felt when l saw that first picture,

325

01:
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When we got to the outcrop

and looked at it up close,

326

01:
11:52,771 -- 01:11:56,400

we realized that the spheres

are embedded in the rock

327

01:
11:56,475 -- 01:11:58,636

like blueberries in a muffin,

328

01:
11:58,710 -- 01:12:03,079

The rock erodes away and the blueberries

fall out and roll down into the soil,

329

01:
12:06,218 -- 01:12:08,277

The blueberries are made of hematite,

330

01:
12:08,353 -- 01:12:12,813

a mineral that on Earth

is often formed in liquid water,

331

01:
12:12,891 -- 01:12:16,327

Next we found jarosite, which is a mineral

that couldn't have formed

332

01:
12:16,394 -- 01:12:22,094

unless there'd been water in the rocks,

so there was water underground here,

333

01:
12:22,167 -- 01:12:26,228

Our most extraordinary discovery came

when we found ripples in the rocks,

334

01:
12:26,304 -- 01:12:31,901

ancient ripples formed when water flowed

over sand on Mars billions of years ago,

335

01:
12:31,977 -- 01:12:34,241

So there wasn't just

water underground here,

336

01:
12:34,312 -- 01:12:37,304

there was water at the surface,

337

01:
12:41,119 -- 01:12:44,520

''Opportunity'' discovered that

at this place billions of years ago,

338

01:
12:44,589 -- 01:12:47,649

Mars was most likely a habitable world,

339

01:
12:47,726 -- 01:12:52,459

A place that, for some interval of time,

was suitable for some forms of life,

340

01:
12:52,531 -- 01:12:56,023

Decades of work paid off

with this discovery,

341

01:
12:57,536 -- 01:13:01,996

Billions of years ago, there were

shallow occasional pools of water,

342

01:
13:02,073 -- 01:13:05,133

Don't think an ocean,

Think of salt flats,

343

01:
13:05,210 -- 01:13:07,610

And the water may not have been

a pretty blue,

344

01:
13:07,679 -- 01:13:11,046

ln fact, it may have been so acid,

it dissolved iron out of the rocks

345

01:
13:11,116 -- 01:13:15,177

and made wine-red pools

under a pink Martian sky,

346

01:
13:31,503 -- 01:13:34,267

All the discoveries that ''Opportunity''

made about water

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01:
13:34,339 -- 01:13:37,103

happened in the first six weeks

of the mission,

348

01:
13:37,175 -- 01:13:39,541

Everything went right for that rover,

349

01:
13:39,611 -- 01:13:42,171

l call ''Opportunity''

''Little Miss Perfect,''

350

01:
13:42,247 -- 01:13:45,239

''Opportunity'' lands

where the evidence is right there,

351

01:
13:45,317 -- 01:13:49,014

The driving is like a parking lot,

Everything is perfect,

352

01:
13:52,223 -- 01:13:55,624

''Spirit,'' our kind of tough,

hard-working, blue-collar rover,

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01:
13:55,694 -- 01:13:59,130

lands in this awful, rocky,

rugged place on a lava plain

354

01:
13:59,197 -- 01:14:02,223

a mile and a half from

the nearest interesting rocks

355

01:
14:02,300 -- 01:14:07,203

and has to struggle for five months

just to begin her mission,

356

01:
14:08,974 -- 01:14:14,412

''Spirit'' had to work for everything,

literally had to climb a mountain on Mars,

357

01:
14:16,281 -- 01:14:18,408

We use the power

that comes from the sun

358

01:
14:18,483 -- 01:14:20,917

to operate the vehicle

and to charge the batteries,

359

01:
14:20,986 -- 01:14:23,648

so the solar arrays are essential,

360

01:
14:23,722 -- 01:14:28,091

On the way to the Columbia Hills,

''Spirit's'' solar arrays got coated with dust,

361

01:
14:28,159 -- 01:14:32,255

We were getting to the point

where ''Spirit'' was simply gonna die,

362

01:
14:32,330 -- 01:14:36,528

Then, one wonderful day, we climbed up

onto the crest of a ridge,

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01:
14:36,601 -- 01:14:39,695

where we were hit by not one

but several gusts of wind

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that just cleaned the solar arrays off,

365

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14:42,407 -- 01:14:46,036

lt was like having a brand-new rover,

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01:
14:46,111 -- 01:14:48,272

''Spirit'' got high up in the Columbia Hills

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and started to find stuff that was different

from anything we'd seen,

368

01:
14:52,017 -- 01:14:57,011

There were salt deposits in the hills

and rocks that had been altered by water,

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01:
14:57,088 -- 01:15:00,546

lt took months of work and struggle,

but ''Spirit'' finally showed us

370

01:
15:00,625 -- 01:15:03,185

there had been water

on both sides of the planet,

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01:
15:03,261 -- 01:15:05,889

She gave us exactly what we needed,

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01:
15:09,768 -- 01:15:12,601

These rovers were designed

to last only 90 Mars days,

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15:12,671 -- 01:15:14,935

and they've already

done many times that,

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15:15,006 -- 01:15:18,305

They've developed personalities,

They're workhorses, They say:

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15:18,376 -- 01:15:21,709

''Push us, Ask us to do more,

We can go further, We can go faster,''

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So we ask so much more

than they were ever intended to,

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15:24,783 -- 01:15:27,377

and to our amazement, they do it,

378

01:
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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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