What Is William Shatner Doing in a NASA Promo About ‘Seven Minutes of Terror’?
- Posted on July 31, 2012 at 12:30pm by
Liz Klimas
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A model of Curiosity at NASA's Mars yard at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The 2,000-pound Mars rover is expected to land on the red planet this Sunday. (Photo: AP/Nick Ut)
NASA’s most ambitious and expensive Mars mission yet depends on the safe arrival of the Curiosity rover on the red planet late Sunday.
It won’t be easy. The complicated touchdown NASA designed for the Curiosity rover is so risky it’s been described as “seven minutes of terror” – the time it takes to go from 13,000 mph to a complete stop.
(Related: Are You Curious About the New $2.5 Billion Mars Rover Set to Launch This Weekend)
Scientists and engineers will be waiting anxiously 154 million miles away as the spacecraft plunges through Mars’ thin atmosphere, and in a new twist, attempts to slowly lower the rover to the bottom of a crater with cables.
Artists rendering of the Mars Rover, Curiosity. (Image: NASA/AP)
If it succeeds, a video camera aboard the rover will have captured the most dramatic minutes for the first filming of a landing on another planet.
In the mean time though, NASA has called upon those familiar with spacecraft — at least the Hollywood kind — to narrate how the landing should go. William Shatner and Will Wheaton, both of whom appeared on Star Trek, talk about Curiosity in this NASA videos.
William Shatner as Captain Kirk. (Photo: Wikimedia)
Watch Shatner’s promotion video:
Here is Wheaton’s:
Curiosity was launched in November and has been making its way to Mars ever since. The project cost has cost $2.5 billion thus far.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover lifts off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 26, 2011. (Photo: AP//John Raoux)
During its two-year exploration, the plutonium-powered Curiosity will climb the lower mountain flanks to probe the deposits. As sophisticated as the rover is, it cannot search for life. Instead, it carries a toolbox including a power drill, rock-zapping laser and mobile chemistry lab to sniff for organic compounds, considered the chemical building blocks of life. It also has cameras to take panoramic photos.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(H/T: Popular Science)
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Zuitsuit
Posted on August 2, 2012 at 2:20pmJust think, soon Nasa will have some new pictures to false color and blurr for your expensive tax dollar viewing pleasure.
Report Post »BuggiOlleo
Posted on August 2, 2012 at 7:58amShatner didn’t break a sweat and looked Cool in his element; however, the man child-Will- struggled..obviously. Captain O Captain..he is second to none in the Sci-fi arena…
Report Post »KangarooJack
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 8:48pmShatner IS SPACE.
Report Post »For many of us, this man’s voice brings to mind how MUCH MORE WE CAN BE.
RSHLUVER
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 6:28pmI love TOS Star Trek.
Report Post »JesterJay
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 2:51amWTF happened to Will Wheaton
Report Post »jmcenanly
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 8:45amHe’s 40 now.
Report Post »JQuentinEvermann
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 12:22pmHe looks like a 4 year old with a beard. Love Will, but wow, cut off that face warmer!
Report Post »RSHLUVER
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 5:55pmLot’s of drugs. He’s very liberal.
Report Post »aquinasreigns
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 12:24amBecause he is Bill Shatner.
Report Post »dmerwin
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 8:55pmActing as the “Priceline NEGOTIATOR” to secure a decent price on lodging.
Report Post »Stu D. Baker-Hawk
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 5:55pmThe more complicated you make a landing such as this, the greater the chance something will go catastrophically wrong. It just seems to me that NASA could’ve better simplified a technique to successfully land a Mars rover as large as the one to be deployed. We shall see…
Report Post »teddrunk
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 3:48pmIn my neck of the woods Shatner is on TV in the wee hours of the morning shilling for some dirtbag ambulance chaser.
Report Post »scrudge
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 2:50pmAh Yes….. 7 min. he must of met oBOZO
Report Post »thegreatcarnac
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:43pmSeven minutes of terror!?? What happened. Did Shatner take some viagra and rape some woman??
Report Post »helmuit_7
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 4:09pmTwice??
Report Post »loriann12
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 6:31amok, you two, You‘re lucky I wasn’t drinking my coffee when I read those two comments….it would be all over my monitor! So funny! Captain Kirk was my hero in first run Star Trek episodes.
Report Post »ajknmpr
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:43pmI work at NASA and couldn’t be more proud. I hope we get a REAL budget soon before we are completely outmatched by countries like China and Russia. We have great plans, we just need to get the government to properly fund them. I’m not for big govt at all, in fact when I worked at the Treasury it was WAY OVER FUNDED (and most of the people were overpaid– for example, debt collectors making 75K a year at FMS, please!). However, NASA does so much good, brings out so much inventions that help medicane and technology, and is our future. I’ll be sleeping out under a rocket while awaiting the arrival of our Rover on Mars. Americans should be proud. Even though we don’t have a means to take people into space currently, we are working on the next system to to us further than ever. In the meantime, please support the great folks at NASA. They work hard, work well with private businesses and use your tax dollars wisely (we cut back on everything we can, including janitorial services, just to put the money where tax payers would expect us to…space technology). To find out more about Curiosity please visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/main/index.html
Report Post »lylejk
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 2:02pmI agree with you; we just now have an Administration with different priorties and they even changed your mission to Muslim outreach; very strange. Maybe a Romny administration will get NASA back into the space race. All for privatization, but they are at least 20 years away from anything that needs to be done yesterday. NASA and the technologies that offspringed from them, have far proven its worth to me anyway and to my country so I do hope NASA gets back to it’s prime mission. I do want to go back to the Moon first though. I do feel He3 is key to future energy creation and it‘s way too rare here on Earth but there’s a plentiful supply on the Moon (and Mars too for that matter). :)
Report Post »Tri-ox
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 5:32pm@AJKNMPR – Yes, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told us all about NASA’s “great plans” when he declared that NASA’s “foremost” mission is to “reach out to the muslim world”.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/
It’s time to defund and gut NASA.
Report Post »teddrunk
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 8:58pmNASA lost me for good when they stopped engineering and went into the phony global warming business.
Report Post »TROONORTH
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 11:09pmThe people at NASA are not following in the footsteps of giants. They are making them. The days of greatness are not over at the cape. The best is yet to come.
Report Post »Lee_in_PA
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:35pmBill’s is better. After all he WAS Captain Kirk.. Will.. bless him, was only a cadet until he messed up some flight pattern. Then he off with The Traveler.
Report Post »Kaoscontrol
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 2:03pmBoth over-act. Will Wheaton’s hair is real, Bill Shatner has been glueing down the toupee since the early 70s.
Report Post »RayOne
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:11pmHe is Canadian, there is no news here.
Report Post »lylejk
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:03pmThough I like Will Wheaton (and enjoyed his few cameos as a obnoxious egotistical scientist on the SyFy TV series Eureka), I have to admit I liked William Shatner’s version better. Maybe my aged bias of course. lol
:)
Report Post »Iowa_man
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:02pmI wonder how Sheldon Cooper feels about Will Wheaton getting to narrate? WHEATON!!!!
Report Post »Seriously, what a grand plan, of course NASA did not do this. It was the road the spacecraft traveled on when being moved to launch position we can thank for this. After all, there is a lota smart folks out there….
KickinBack
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 12:57pmDutch company planning to send people on one-way ticket to Mars…
http://www.dutchdailynews.com/dutch-company-planning-first-ever-space-mission-to-mars/
I nominate all the moon landing nay-sayers. Somehow, all those crazy, tin-foil-top wearing conspiracy theorists will look good as a permanent fixture on the red planet…
Report Post »JQuentinEvermann
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 12:33pmSo you think it is more difficult to fake something than to actually do it? Or do you just really trust the government? Or does it make no sense to you that we would try to end a race that was determined to be unwinable? I‘m not saying we didn’t go, just that there are too many unanswered questions for you to take it on faith. I’ll go put on my foil hat if it will make you happy, but its odd that we had more to gain by faking it than to have actually done it.
Maybe I’m just realizing that government always lies, so why believe something so outlandish as going to the moon. And then there’s the Van Allen Belt…
Report Post »KickinBack
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 5:47pmSo you‘re telling me that out of the 100’s of thousands of workers, scientists, contracters, etc. That worked on the Apollo program, all of them had sworn to government secrecy, even up to those that have passed on.
Not one, not one single person has ever come forward -even on their deathbed- and broke silence about your hoax. Numbers don’t lie buddy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wcrkxOgzhU
Report Post »purecolorartist
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 12:55pmI’ll be there. I sure hope it works. I followed the other 2 rovers for years. This is American exceptionalism.
Report Post »Mark0331
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 12:49pmNASA just confirmed that ‘Slow Ride’ by Foghat will be playing during this time period….good stuff
Report Post »LeadNotFollow
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 12:47pm…
Report Post »Wish Shatner’s TV show “My Dad Says” had not been cancelled. It was really funny.
LeadNotFollow
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 12:46pm…
Report Post »Why not pick William Shatner to narrate?
After all, he is Captain James Tiberius Kirk.
Just wish he had narrated it in his “over the top” Captain Kirk voice.
justasurvivor
Posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:09pmActually, there were hints of it – especially how he would say 2 or 3 words at the beginning of a sentence, take a breath, and then continue. I heard shadows of the young Captain.
Report Post »In my imagination, I could also hear Bones and Spock arguing about it all.