Roving Mars

[first lines]

Introduction by:
[voiceover] Space exploration began with dreaming. Thousands of years of humans staring into the heavens and wondering, how did this begin? What else is out there? The earliest answers were given in myth and poetry. Now they are sought by space age technology. And while each mission increases our knowledge, it also leads our imagination further and further. How did life begin? Did it happen more than once in the universe? The answer may lie on Mars.

[last lines]

Narrator:
[voiceover] Spirit and Opportunity have shown us that once, three to four billion years ago, Mars had the essential ingredients for life. So the next step is to seek out evidence of life itself. Right now we have one example of life - us. We may be all there is - we simply don't know. But if you can show that life developed twice in one solar system, and then you consider the multitude of solar systems out there, it takes no great leap of imagination to believe that life might be a common phenomenon throughout the universe. [pause] Our rovers have gone farther, harder, and longer than even we, their creators, believed possible. They've done heroic work. But someday we won't need robots. Someday there'll be humans on the surface of Mars, and boot prints in our wheel tracks. This mission has put us on a great trajectory to learn more about Mars and about ourselves. But right now, Spirit and Opportunity are still roving Mars. It's not just that they've exceeded our wildest dreams. In many ways, they are our wildest dreams.