[Rand]

Non sono propriamente documentari, ma:

- Bootleg Postcards - Unofficial Biographies of Robotic Spacecraft

Doug Ellison, Founder of Unmannedspaceflight.com, gives a lecture at the Von Karman auditorium at NASA's JPL Laboratory, on the efforts of amateur enthusiasts following the missions exploring our solar system.

Doug Ellison parla degli sforzi/risultati degli appassionati che seguono le missioni spaziali. La presentazione è focalizzata su unmannedspaceflight.com (comprensibile visto che è il fondatore del sito e bene o male molte attività importanti/interessanti si sono originate da lì).

- Why space missions fail

Doug Ellison, a space exploration addict talking at the 2008 Milton Keynes Science Festival. Doug explains why many space missions fail and looks at Cassini-Huygens, Challenger, Galileo and Genesis for answers. While some mistakes are pure boneheaded human error, Doug maintains that science still happens.

Descrizione di diversi problemi relativi a sonde e del perché sono accaduti.

- From Legs to Wheels

NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory, will be landing with an extremely unusual landing system -- a skycrane invented by the mission team specifically to land a large rover in scientifically exciting locations on Mars. But why not use "tried and true" solutions like legs or airbags? This talk will look at the fascinating history and evolution of how the skycrane landing architecture evolved from simple landing legs used on JPL's Surveyor lunar landers of the 1960s to the current design. It will describe how the mission team spent years evaluating the landing techniques used on missions from Viking, Lunokhod, Pathfinder and Apollo to distill out the features and performance from each that helped meet the demanding requirements of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Numerous interesting and bizarre concepts and configurations, most of which never left the drawing boards and some of which were actually prototyped and tested, will be described.

Vi siete mai domandati come si è arrivati alla "skycrane" come metodo di atterraggio? Questo video descrive il processo con cui si è arrivati a compiere questa scelta.

- Spirit and Opportunity: The Corps of Discovery for Mars Rolls On

For five Earth years, the intrepid robotic explorers Spirit and Opportunity have been successfully conducting field geology at two different locations on the surface of Mars. Originally designed for a 90-Martian-day mission, the twin rovers have exceeded that requirement by a factor of 20. The rovers have traversed great plains, climbed mountains, descended into deep craters and survived lethal dust storms and frigid winters. As the rovers move, each day becomes a brand new mission with new sights and new geology to explore. With many significant discoveries already under their robotic “belts,” the rovers look ahead to 2009.

Steve Squyres parla delle missioni dei MER (fino al Gennaio 2009). E' un ottimo oratore, quindi merita una visione anche se bene o male si conosce già la storia dei due rover.