Good Night Oppy

This week, my wife and I watched Amazon's new documentary, "Good Night Oppy." The movie chronicles the development of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers that explored our neighboring planet from 2004 until 2018, far exceeding their original design specifications for a 90-day mission. The shared vision and camaraderie of the scientists and engineers who conceived and carried out the mission come through in interviews, historical footage, and dramatizations of the little Mars rovers facing and overcoming one obstacle after another, courtesy of fantastic CGI from Industrial Light and Magic.

There's a lot of heart in this movie. As you hear the team talk about how the identical twin rovers developed their own quirks and personalities, you'll start rooting for these brave little machines too. The producers didn't have to manufacture an anthropomorphic storyline to hook viewers. They just had to capture the one that was already there in the hearts of the team. Just watch them bite their nails as the rovers struggle with steep slopes, shifting sands, broken wheels, and mammoth dust storms. Listen to their nearly parental concern as the rovers grow old and develop "arthritis" and start traveling with a limp. The ending is both poignant and triumphant as they celebrate their accomplishments but know they'll never hear from their rovers again.

The film is fast-paced for a documentary, punctuating the science story with the crises surmounted along the way. The vibe is similar to "For All Mankind" without the politics and the drunken astronauts, and the production values are at least as high.

The film featured Steve Squyers, a professor of Astronomy here at Cornell, where I work. That also reminded me of the time I took an astronomy class from Carl Sagan when he was still here. He was deep in the preparations for the Viking mission, the first landing of a craft on the surface of Mars. No one knew what they would find. In one lecture, he quipped, "Our greatest fear is that every morning we'll see footprints in the sand around the lander and never catch a glimpse of what makes those footprints every night while the craft is sleeping."