Good Night Oppy

Two rovers are sent to Mars. Spirit and Opportunity. The mission is for ninety days; the engineers expect no more, because dust will cover the solar panels and the power will end. They land. Ninety days pass and the rovers keep working. Then a wind cleans the panels. Months turn into a year. The team starts each day by playing the rover a song. Opportunity travels kilometres, goes down into craters and finds traces of water. It works for close to fifteen years. In the end a dust storm comes. Ryan White directs. Steve Squyres, Jennifer Trosper and Rob Manning from the mission team speak in it; Angela Bassett narrates. It is an American production. The visual effects were made by an effects studio and the Mars scenes were built from actual mission data. The documentary uses archive recordings; the moments in the control room come from real footage. The matter it treats is attachment to a machine; the team treats the rovers as people and the documentary does not judge that. The narrative simplifies the engineering and keeps the technical side in the background. The documentary follows the lives of the people on the team as well; over fifteen years children grow and careers change. The last section describes the closing of the mission and the emotional steering rises. Its limit is method; the narrative is too sentimental, the science superficial, and the ending tuned to make you cry. Who it is for: viewers who like space documentary and mission narratives. Who it is not for: the emotional dose is high, the science thin, and the ending where expected.