The Curiosity Mars Rover captured the public’s imagination when it landed on the red planet Aug. 6, 2012, and a new short film from a pair of Colorado-bred creatives celebrates the science and inspiration behind its accomplishments.
“Our Curiosity,” a video tribute to NASA’s most popular Mars Science Laboratory project, has racked up more than 55,000 views on YouTube since it was posted Aug. 7.
Timed to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the Curiosity landing, the video is the work of Cherry Creek High School grads Austin Wintory, a Los Angeles-based composer, and Jeff Marlow, an astrobiologist and Wired magazine writer who officially blogged about Curiosity for NASA.
“We wanted to evangelize for the fact that this is really quite cutting-edge science but also very tangible and understandable,” Wintory said.
The video features narration by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who recently starred in the reboot of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” TV series.
Wintory and Marlow hatched the idea for the six-minute video over a year ago, working backward from the normal production process by composing music and recording voice-overs before creating any imagery. Caltech, via NASA, helped fund the modest project with “tens of thousands of dollars.”
There’s another Colorado connection: Multiple Curiosity elements were designed and built here, including Lockheed Martin’s “aeroshell” heat shield, which protected the 1-ton, $2.5 billion device’s instruments from the harsh Martian atmosphere.
Watch the full video at ourcuriosity.org, and read the full interview with Wintory on Shiny Objects: blogs.denverpost.com/nerd.
