For those of you into space travel, you may already be familiar with the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. Rosetta is a robotic space probe built and launched by the ESA to perform a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Name rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? The Rosetta probe was launched on March 2 of 2004 and reached the comet on August 6 of this year, which made it the first spacecraft to orbit a comet. The lander, Philae, is scheduled to detach from Rosetta on November 12 to make contact with the comet. In order to drum up some interest and support for this momentous occasion, the ESA worked with Platige Image in order to create AMBITION. This short film that stresses not only the importance of this mission, but space travel in general.
While the film may be a little on the nose, it does bring up some of the more important questions regarding space travel and what we could find/discover if given the opportunity and funding. I suppose it's hard for some to justify how such a great deal of money could advance our society, but even NASA publishes a list every year of spinoff technologies created in the pursuit of space travel, which ranges from baby formula to shoe insoles (no, Tang is not on that list). With Christopher Nolan's INTERSTELLAR coming out next Friday, if there was a time the world was ready to really get behind space travel, now would be it.
You can check out more details on the Rosetta mission here!