Highlighting Bonestell's legacy, Pascal Lee wrote: "In painting this new "Exploring Mars", I wanted to pay tribute to the grand master of space art and his creation of an iconic classic, but also update elements of the landscape and hardware in light of new knowledge gained about Mars in the intervening 65 years and evolutions in our thinking about future Mars exploration systems and human surface operations."
Comparison of Bonestell's (1956) and Lee's (2021) "Exploring Mars":