Robots on real-life mission to Mars
The touchdown of NASA probes Opportunity and Spirit on Mars in 2004 was a worldwide media event; then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore were at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles to witness the historic event.
Each probe, landing on opposite sides of the Red Planet, was designed to last 90 days — provided each survived the landing. They did, and in one if the great NASA achievements, the probes sent reams of valuable data for years. Spirit lasted six years and Opportunity, Oppy for short, ceased transmission more than 14 years later.
Ryan White’s documentary “Good Night Oppy” — which streams on Prime Video beginning Wednesday, Nov. 23 — delves deep into the mission, digitally recreating (by visual effects supervisor Ivan Busquets and his team at San Francisco’s Industrial Light & Magic) the robots and Martian landscape, based on the images sent back by the probes; and takes us inside mission control, where scientists and engineers formed an intense bond not only with each other, but with the robots themselves.
They thought of the probes as family members, becoming at times emotional when their little buddies were in danger, such as being stuck in sand traps or as they weathered a punishing Martian winter. That’s reflected in Angela Bassett’s steady commentary — late in Oppy’s existence, she says an aging Oppy is “suffering from arthritis” (sand had become wedged in the joints).
White structures the documentary as an absorbing adventure tale, and that it is. In the early years of the mission, Opportunity and Spirit were celebrities, the subject of news reports and late-night jokes, with NASA scientists such as principal scientist Steven Squyres appearing on talk shows.
Toward the final years of the mission, the media had largely forgotten about Oppy, but for the occasionally geological discoveries; and members of mission control were living full lives — having families and getting older, and a new generation of engineers and scientists replacing those who had moved on.
If there’s a weakness in the documentary, which flies by its 105 minutes, it’s that it short-shrifts the science, the whole reason for the probes’ mission. White does briefly focus on the search for evidence of water and some other geological details, but this mission sent back a vast amount of scientific information. “Good Night Oppy” only scratches the surface.
Instead, much of the film is about the emotional investment of the JPL team and dealing with technical challenges — such as the crisis when one of the probes gets stuck in the sand, so the team builds its own sand trap on the JPL premises and, with a robot duplicate, figures out how the probe can free itself.
Ultimately though, White’s movie is about people, not robots, and stands as a testament to dreaming, to cooperation, to pushing boundaries, and tapping into the vast potential of humanity.