Rover and out...
Prof Brian Cox takes fascinating behind the scenes look at NASA
IT’S hard not to be swept along with Brian Cox’s enthusiasm and sheer wonder at the universe, and this is another fascinating documentary.
In a unique television event, the professor fulfils a childhood dream by going behind the scenes at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), mission control for Mars 2020.
In 1980, a young Brian wrote to JPL asking for photos from some of their missions to the planets.
He was overwhelmed to receive a package all the way from California containing photos from Voyager and the Viking mission to Mars – they even inspired him to become a physicist.
So you can imagine his excitement that 40 years later, he has now been granted privileged access to JPL, including to key mission areas that are usually off-limits to film crews.
Brian says: “Right now, the rover Perseverance is 200 million miles away on the surface of Mars.
“It’s on the floor of Jezero Crater and it’s taking the images and collecting the samples that might tell us whether life ever existed on the red planet.”
Brian spends a week following the team who guide the
Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter (the first powered aircraft we have ever sent to another planet) across the surface of Mars during a critical stage of the mission.
Perseverance’s goal is to search for the signs of long extinct life on the surface of Mars – in an area called Jezero Crater that, 3.8 billion years ago, was filled by a vast lake.
If it finds evidence of that life, it could change everything we know about life in the universe.