President Macky Sall will be on March 21 at 10 a.m. at the Grand Théâtre to attend the premiere of the film “Star Hunters” by Marame Kaire which relates the odyssey of a NASA spacecraft named Lucy which takes off from Cape Canaveral ( Florida, USA) for a mission to a group of asteroids located in the orbit of the planet Jupiter, more than 400 million kilometers from Earth and believed to hold important clues to the origins of our Solar System. Hours before, in Senegal, West Africa, a team of scientists sets out to capture extraordinarily precise observations, critical to the success of the Lucy mission – crucial data, needed to help NASA direct Lucy to its targets. asteroids across millions of miles in space. The team’s leader, Senegalese astronomer Maram Kairé, takes viewers on a journey to investigate his country’s rich and deep history of astronomy, stretching back thousands of years – and the promising future that access to space offers them.
This never-before-seen 56-minute documentary is co-produced by the world-renowned TERRA MATER studios (Vienna, Austria) and the world’s largest science television channel, NOVA-PBS (USA). It tells the story of African astronomy through a visionary Senegalese astronomer who, pursuing his dream of building a space agency for his country, attempts a high-stakes observation of a distant asteroid, vital for the LUCY space mission of the Nasa. From the megalithic sites of Sine-Saloum to skywatchers in Touba and Istanbul, this film explores the heritage and future of astronomy in Senegal and Africa.
Taking into account the exceptional nature of this film, the first of its kind made in Africa, the President of the Republic, Macky Sall suggested to the producers to organize a premiere in Senegal.
Mr. Marc Buie, American astronomer, head of NASA occultation missions and co-investigator of the LUCY space mission, filmmaker Ruth Berry (Cinema Award) and the film and production teams were specially invited to Dakar by the HE Sponsor on this occasion.
By way of recognition of the support provided by the Head of State for the production of this film, the producers TERRA MATER have decided to offer the Senegalese the rights of retransmission through the national television RTS in order to benefit from it population.
This film crowns three stellar occultation missions carried out in Senegal between 2018 and 2021 for NASA as part of the exploration of the solar system. In this sense, it illustrates a coordinated effort to promote astronomical and space sciences and to disseminate scientific culture.
The film was hailed by critics, including the prestigious Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Black History Month, which ranked it among its 30 inspirations.
Auteur: Seneweb – Seneweb.com
