The idea of going to Mars is exciting. The reality? Usually, outside of thrilling moments such as the seven seconds of terror that landed the Curiosity Rover on Mars and turned a mohawk-wearing mission controller into a social media superstar, not so much.
Full marks to NASA, then, for this video introducing Maven. An unmanned probe whose name is a contraction of the rather dry title Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution missioN, Maven will scour our solar neighbor for clues to the story of its climate change, and hopefully find out why the Red Planet became a dead planet in the first place.
A noble goal -- but as with all climate change science, a hard one to render interesting to the general viewing public. So the agency has come out with all guns blazing on this one. Star Trek actor and Reading Rainbow legend LeVar Burton narrates, while the CGI gives us a glimpse of old Mars and human explorers on future Mars, all to a rousing John Williams-style soundtrack.
Notably absent: any talk of surface erosion, magnetic currents, dendritic structured channels, or any of the other worthy scientific lingo that NASA folks will get into if you talk to them about Maven for long enough.
If the Burton video has whetted your appetite for the mission, check out this highly detailed, topographically accurate CGI rendering by NASA of what Mars may have looked like 4 billion years ago, before it lost its atmosphere: