Roving Mars

A trip to the Red Planet

''Roving Mars'' mixes actual footage shot by robots on the planet and digital animation of space journey and landings. (Jpl/nasa/caltech)

Mars is a spacecraft graveyard. Two out of three missions to the Red Planet fail. As one scientist in the short IMAX documentary "Roving Mars" explains, a craft landing safely is akin to tossing a basketball from Los Angeles to New York and hitting nothing but net.

Released in 2006, "Roving Mars" finally makes its New England premiere on the Museum of Science's Mugar Omni Theater IMAX Dome screen, marking the fifth anniversary of the twin Mars Exploration Rover, or MER, landings of January 2004. The missions were duplicated in case either one missed its mark.

Directed by Holderness, N.H., resident George Butler ("Pumping Iron," "The Endurance"), "Roving Mars" covers the narrative arc of the NASA MER missions, from the trials and errors of building the rovers to the dreaded radio silence as the crafts plunge through the Martian atmosphere and Mission Control scientists fret that their $820 million babies will vaporize. Despite audiences knowing the happy ending from the get-go, Butler manages to inject considerable drama.

The only major flaws are Philip Glass's soundtrack (how many times will the guy compose the same score?), and the late Paul Newman's cosmic-bombastic voiceover, which launches the movie and, thankfully, ends abruptly. What follows is better: narration by mission leader Steven Squyres and interviews with other engineers who explain the technical challenges in language that laypeople can grasp.

Though presented by Disney (and Lockheed Martin), "Roving Mars" is not a "WALL-E" fantasy. Any cutesy anthropomorphizing of the rovers is kept to a minimum. But there's one problem that might irk documentary purists: Since no camera could have filmed all the events in the 300 million mile Earth-to-Mars journey, digital animation fills in the gaps - but so seamlessly that viewers can't always be sure which astounding images originate from the rovers' actual Mars footage, and which are special effects.

Note: The film is free each Friday in January at the Museum of Science, where visitors can play with the Personal Exploration Rover simulator exhibit, and see NASA's full-size model of the Spirit/Opportunity rover.