Astronauts exploring Mars by Manchu

Picture of the Day 14/2/15 - "Sunrise on Mars polar cap" by French sci-fi artist Manchu (Philippe Bouchet).

Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars by Peter Elson

A set of paintings for the book covers of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy by classical space illustrator Peter Elson.
More of his paintings you can find here.

Phase 1. - Red Mars:

Phase 2. - Green Mars:

Phase 3. - Blue Mars:

Mars colony by Robert McCall

Picture of the Day 12/2/15 - "Mars metropolis" (1999) by legendary space artist Robert McCall. More of his space art here.

Carl Sagan: Blues for a Red Planet (documentary)

Blues for a Red Planet (1980) is a documentary about the exploration of Mars by Carl Sagan - the famous visionary of space exploration and colonization. It is the 5th episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos series and follows the humanity's gradually improving perception of the planet Mars - from our first looks at the night sky to Schiaparelli's Martian canals and global myth of intelligent but dying Martian civilization and finally the first Mars probes and two Viking landers (the most recent Mars probes of that time).

You can watch the full documentary here:

Astronauts exploring Mars by Kyle Brown

Picture of the Day 7/2/15 - Astronauts trying to find a lost Mars rover by American concept artist Kyle Brown. More of his art here.

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Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars by CarlosNCT

A set of artwork by Spanish digital artist CarlosNCT inspired from three phases of terraformation of Mars in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Click to view in full resolution:

Phase 1. - Red Mars:

Mars colony by Don Dixon

Picture of the Day 31/1/15 - Astronauts set up a relay antenna near a Mars colony by Don Dixon, 2005. More of his space art here.

Mars movie review - Stranded (2001)

Stranded (original title in Spanish: Náufragos) is a 2001 low budget Spanish movie about struggle for survival of 5 astronauts stranded on Mars. Not all of them survive till the end.

Story

The movie starts with Mars landing craft crashing on the surface of the planet along with 6 astronauts. The captain of the crew is dead and the remaining 5 are trying to figure out how to survive till the rescue mission could hopefully arrive 26 months later. The resources of food, water, oxygen and energy is limited and the only "solution" seems to be to let survive only 2 of them. So the 3 "expendable" ones are going for a "walk". They reach the edge of the Valles Marineris and descend down. When only 2 of them are left they discover a cave which unexpectedly turn into ancient Martian tunnels with oxygen in them. An unfortunate step into "wrong" tunnel kills 1 of 2 remaining ones. The last surviving women discovers the dead bodies of local Martians and their somehow pressurized (with no visible roof) oasis / ghost town into the depths of Valles Marineris. So she calls the other 2 which had stayed in the landing craft to come and join her. Hopefully they will survive till the rescue comes.

Verdict: 5/10

If the best Mars movie - Total Recall - would be about 1 point short of being "the ideal Mars movie", Stranded is 4 more points bellow that level because of these huge drawbacks:

• the movie is low budget and it definitely feels like being low budget;
• the acting is very poor. You don't get the feeling that characters are actual top-level astronauts/scientists which had been carefully chosen to be the first humans on Mars. Dialogues are clumsy and, despite the movie being quite depressive, the actors don't believably act as being hopelessly stranded millions of miles from Earth with possible rescue coming only years away at best.

Despite that, the concept of the movie is quite interesting (unlike some recent Mars-zombie movies like The last days on Mars with a bigger budget) and Stranded is worth watching for Mars fans.

Here you can watch the trailer of the movie:

My reviews of other movies set on Mars:

• Red Planet (2000)
• Red Faction: Origins TV movie (2011)

Lone astronaut on Mars by Alberto Vangelista

Picture of the Day 28/1/15 - A lone explorer on Mars by Italian digital artist Alberto Vangelista. More of his art here.

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Mars colonies in Babylon 5

Babylon 5 (1994-1998) is far from being my favorite sci-fi TV series (to be exact - I have watched only one episode: s04e10 "Racing Mars"), but it is one of very few TV series / movies depicting human colonies on Mars in some of its episodes (Mars is only a minor stage for story of the series). In Babylon 5 universe the rapid colonization and terraforming of Mars starts in mid-22nd century with only limited scientific missions before that. As in almost all fiction about colonization of Mars, eventually there rises a rebellion against Earth control with an aim for Mars independence. You can read about Mars in Babylon 5 universe here. Click to view in full resolution: