Cornell University to have Mars Rover screening

Cornell Cinema will present a free screening of the documentary Good Night Oppy on Tuesday, May 2 at 7 p.m. Principle investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Project Steven Squyres will join via Zoom for a conversation after the screening. Squyres, professor emeritus of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, is featured in the film.

The movie explores the journey of Opportunity, an exploration rover sent to Mars in 2003 by a team of scientists and researchers that included Squyres. Initially predicted to survive on the planet for 90 days, the rover—affectionately nicknamed “Oppy”—continued to explore the red planet far beyond her expiration date, lasting nearly 15 years on the planet’s surface gathering data to feed back to NASA. The documentary interrogates the significance of Opportunity’s endurance for the future of interstellar discovery.

Squyres’ research focuses on the robotic exploration of planetary surfaces, the history of water on Mars, geophysics and tectonics of icy satellites, tectonics of Venus, planetary gamma-ray and x-ray spectroscopy.

The screening is sponsored by the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and in partnership with Cornell Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences.