Relive the Magic of the Latest Rocket Launch to Mars in Three Glorious Minutes

Two weeks ago, the European Space Agency launched ExoMars, a major new mission that’ll hunt for signs of alien life on the Red Planet. Now, the ESA has kindly cut us a sick highlight reel set to some orchestral dubstep so that we can all spend our Friday reliving the magic of six metric tons of metal escaping Earth’s gravity well in a fiery inferno.

The timelapse shows us the preparations leading up to the March 14th launch, including the integration of a prototype landing module with the mission’s flagship Trace Gas Orbiter, which’ll spend the next few years sniffing out methane in Mars’ atmosphere. The payload is then shipped to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where it’s loaded onto a Russian Proton rocket and sent off on its merry way.

It’s worth noting that neither the ESA nor Roscosmos has a great track record when it comes to visiting Mars, and this mission represents the culmination of many years worth of international collaboration between the two space agencies. There’s quite a bit of national pride staked on its success, so you can forgive the ExoMars folks trying to make sure their rocket launch is cemented in our collective memories as one of the most hype AF space events of the year.

Though I dunno, SpaceX had guitar shredding and a slo-mo cheer scene in its latest rocket launch supercut.