If you are a lover of things that have something to do with astronomy, space exploration or the universe in general, here is a short film that you will likely find very interesting. The European Space Agency has teamed up with Polish director Tomek Baginski to create a visually-stunning short film called Ambition that's set in a futuristic world.
The nearly 7-minute piece is obviously part of a campaign to drum up awareness to the ESA's Rosetta mission. This mission was launched in 2004 and its main goal is to land on a comet, study its nucleus and environment, and find clues to the origins of the universe (the Solar system in particular) and life on planet Earth.
The Rosetta spacecraft has arrived at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August of this year. The spacecraft is now orbiting the comet and come November 12 of this year, Rosetta will deploy its lander, Philae, to a landing site on the surface of the comet. The landing site has been chosen last September 15.
The Rosetta spacecraft has arrived at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August of this year. The spacecraft is now orbiting the comet and come November 12 of this year, Rosetta will deploy its lander, Philae, to a landing site on the surface of the comet. The landing site has been chosen last September 15.
The lander has been equipped with
at least ten instruments that will allow it to perform measurements on
the surface of the comet. For everything you need to know about the
Rosetta mission, you should visit the page for it on the European Space
Agency website here. And without further ado, here's the Ambition short film by director Baginski.
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| Photo from ambitionfilm.com. |
The short film stars Aisling Franciosi as the Apprentice and Aidan Gillen as the Master. You may recognize Gillen as the actor behind the character Littlefinger on HBO's Game of Thrones.
The plot is pretty simple. Set in the future in a location that's probably not on our home planet Earth, the film portrays a scene of a Master teaching his Apprentice and using the dusty landscape as the canvas. The topic at hand is water and its origins. That some of the water on Earth came from comets that had collided with it is an accepted theory in the scientific community. The Master then tells the story of how man deployed for the first time a lander on the surface of a comet. That lander came from the spacecraft Rosetta.
Of course, we are yet to know if such deployment will be successful. Philae, Rosetta's lander, is scheduled for a rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. That's barely two weeks away. Watch and read about the Rosetta mission and all its glory here. It's beautiful. Seriously.
