Mars Rover Curiosity
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 07.30.2012 at 4:25 pm 5 Comments

Wil Wheaton On Mars NASA

NASA is enlisting Hollywood to help promote its blockbuster new Mars rover, Curiosity, in a couple of new videos. Below you can watch both William Shatner and Wil Wheaton, vets of various "Star Trek" franchises, describe Curiosity’s “seven minutes of terror” as it touches down on Mars.

As regular readers know by now, Curiosity has a very tricky landing ahead in a week’s time, including use of a supersonic parachute and an elaborate “sky crane” lowering the rover onto the surface. Wheaton and Shatner lend some appropriately dramatic narration to NASA’s animation of these events.

Both sci-fi actors are no stranger to promotion of real space science; Shatner has phoned the International Space Station to wake up the astronauts, and he’s narrated dramatic space shuttle commemoration videos. Wheaton promotes NASA and argues for more funding through his multitudinous social media channels. Watch them both below and get jazzed for Curiosity’s landing ... and remember to check with PopSci, live from Mission Control, for all the latest!



5 Comments

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killerT
07/30/12 at 4:57 pm

My Curiosity is prompting me to ask, Where are all the exciting test videos NASA could be using to promote this mission, instead of all these boring animations?
Really, the preparation for this mission should be exciting promotional material.

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rlb2
07/30/12 at 5:24 pm

Here is another way to land Curiosity on Mars presented to the Mars Society Conference in 2007, by clicking on the first page image you also get an animation of how you can land Curiosity by a simpler device called the Skyclimber.

http://shineinnovations.com/media/The$20Skyclimber.pdf

Ron Bennett

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beefymclovin
07/31/12 at 1:09 pm

so they got the one most trekkies hated and the one that got annoying... was nemoy or steward or spinner, dorn or jones not available? ya know the ones with voices we liked to hear and didnt sing in spoken word? seriously id rather hear it narrated one of those guys in character...

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spark55155
07/31/12 at 1:32 pm

That picture of Wil Wheaton - it looks like something is biting him in the ass.

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ford2go
08/01/12 at 2:20 am

William Shatner, possibly the worse actor ever, but he keeps getting work.

Spock, Picard, Janeway, Data -- there were many better options.

The late Jim Doohan ( Scotty) would have been wonderful.



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