Gorgeous Curiosity Rover Tribute Video

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

One of the biggest science stories of the year, if not the biggest, has been the Curiosity rover touching down on the surface of Mars and exploring the Gale Crater. And now a beautiful new video pays tribute to the mission, showing how it is so much more than a scientific exploration, but a true endeavor of love and passion.

There’s not a whole lot to say that the images in this video don’t express in a much more elegant manner.

Directed by photojournalist Dan Winters, this short film is a stunning combination of video and stills. Put together with a delicate touch, this is a moving, almost poetic look at hard science that is mesmerizing from end to end. The pace is very deliberate and low-key, and the haunting score is a perfect match for the stark images of the desolate Martian surface. It looks like the setting for a grim, bleak spaghetti western.

Listening to the joyous cheers of celebration as Curiosity touches down, you can’t help but feel the enthusiasm of all the people together in the control center. And when you hear the voices and words of the people working behind the scenes on the project, it is easy to tell that this is so much more than a job, experiment, science project, or simple feat of engineering to everyone involved. As one man says in the video, he’s devoted more than one third of his life to the Curiosity project, and watching all of that work come to fruition is truly moving and inspiring to see.