Mars Dead or Alive – Eclecticism

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on January 21, 2004). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

If you’ve got an hour to kill and a broadband connection, the NOVA program “Mars Dead or Alive” is freely available on the web! I’ve just spent the past hour watching it, and it’s fascinating, going from the construction of the two rovers and the problems encountered during their assembly and testing, through both launches, and right up to Spirit’s successful landing on Mars.

To watch the program, just go to the ‘Watch the program‘ section of the site, choose your connection type, and kick back.

Tip for QuckTime Pro users: Rather than watching the program in the small pop-up window that their site provides, just open up QuickTime Player, choose File: Open URL in New Player…, and paste in this URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mars/media2/mars.mov. Once you’ve done that, you can then choose Movie: Present movie… and watch the entire program full-screen.

(via IPFreely)

Also available in the site is ‘From Launch to Landing‘, a stunning nine-minute long computer animation of Spirit’s journey from liftoff to its first moments trekking across the Martian landscape.