Bad news: Ambition wasn’t the movie as I wished for (it should be!) It’s a short film directed by Oscar-winning Tomek Bagiński and starring Aidan Gillen — Littlefinger of Game of Thrones — about the importance of the Rosetta mission, the first that will make contact with a comet. Good news: It’s cool and you can watch it here.
The short film tells the story of one of the most important space exploration endeavours of this decade. Just as Gillen’s enigmatic Master encourages Franciosi’s Apprentice to seek out the key to life amidst a rugged alien landscape, ESA has been on a decade-long ambitious journey of its own, to unlock the mysteries of a comet and the origins of our Solar System with its Rosetta spacecraft, hundreds of millions of kilometres from Earth.
AMBITION complements the ongoing communication about Rosetta and adds a “human dimension” to the scientific and technological achievements of the mission, which include curiosity, drive and ambition.
I think it’s awesome that they did this. Comets can indeed be the origin of water and life on Earth. The fact that we are about to land on one to actually drill into it and analyse it is a major scientific breakthrough. It may not be as flashy as sending rovers or humans to Mars, but its significance in understanding our place in the cosmos can be enormous.