'Game of Thrones' slimeball stars in new sci-fi salute to space
Watch Lord Baelish teach Jedi-like powers to his apprentice in a future where humans have superpowers, thanks in part to the little robot that plans to land on a comet next month.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
In more than a decade since the Rosetta mission to catch a comet launched in 2004, it's been upstaged by more immediate achievements in space exploration like the wanderings of two Mars rovers, fascinating new looks at Saturn and its satellites, and our rapidly expanding knowledge of distant exoplanets thanks to Kepler and the last generation of space telescopes.
Until Rosetta woke up earlier this year from its energy-saving slumber during its long transit to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it had received little media coverage. (I'm a little ashamed to admit that I had never heard of the European Space Agency-led mission.)
So, if space nerds like me somehow missed the memo on Rosetta for the past decade, it seems clear that the ESA has some work to do to bring the general public up to speed and get us all excited for the first ever soft landing on a comet, currently scheduled for November 12.
How do you do that? In 2014, you harness the star power of " Game of Thrones," of course.
Aiden Gillen, who plays Lord Petyr Baelish on the HBO hit series, stars in the short film below that imagines a future in which mankind has harnessed some of the universe's creative (and destructive) powers that seem still well beyond our grasp today. Gillen plays the master teaching his apprentice to control her Jedi-like abilities, delivering a lecture on the importance of ambition.
"Ambition" is also the title of the short, directed by Tomek Baginski and shot on location in Iceland, and as you'll see the title is also a direct reference to the audacious goals of the Rosetta mission.
Rosetta is already providing new insights -- had it not been for the mission, we wouldn't know that while comets can be beautiful and may hold the key to life, they also kind of stink.
Check out the short film for yourself and mark your calendars for November 12, a historic date more than a decade in the making that's sure to be the beginning of many more weird and wonderful revelations.