Painting of a human base on Mars by Dmytro Ivashchenko

Picture of the Day 30/06/2022 - Sunset on Mars - oil painting of a human base on Mars by Ukrainian freelance artist Dmytro Ivashchenko. More of his art here.

3 way race to Mars in season 3 of "For All Mankind" alternate history TV series

For All Mankind is an alternate history sci-fi TV series exploring the idea of never ending space race if Soviets would have beaten US in the race for the Moon. In first two seasons of the show the focus was the Moon: in season 1, depicting alternate 1969 to 1974, both Soviets and US start building their separate bases near the lunar South pole; in season 2, depicting the alternate 1983, both bases have been expanded and the superpowers compete for resources on the Lunar surface.

As hinted in the final scene of season 2 Mars will be the central stage in season 3 of the show. Recently released season 3 trailer shows that the Soviets and US are joined by a private company Helios for a three way race to Mars in 1995. Here you can watch the trailer and see some screenshots from it. The season 3 will start airing in June 10 on Apple TV+.

Helios' Mars mobile habitat:

3 rivals racing for Mars in season 3 of For All Mankind TV series:

NASA's spaceship arriving to Mars:

How we will travel beyond Mars - shortfilm by Erik Wernquist

Swedish digital artist Erik Wernquist, the author of the stunning shortfilm "Wanderers" which depicts a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, has created another inspirational shortfilm "Go Incredibly Fast" "to identify a few propulsion approaches we might utilize to send humans to the worlds in our Solar System beyond Mars and reach out across the vast distances between stars."

Here you can watch the shortfilm and see some Mars-related images from it:

Astronaut in front of Mars colony:

Space station orbiting Mars:

SpaceX Starships at Mars Base Alpha by TijnM

YouTuber TijnM has created an animation of SpaceX's Starship traveling to Mars and landing at Mars Base Alpha. Here are two renders of the base made for the animation:

Here is the full animation:

Militech colony on Mars in Cyberpunk 2077

Militech is a megacorporation specializing in weapons manufacturing and private military contracting in the alternate universe of the futuristic dystopian Cyberpunk franchise. It dominates much of the New United States of America's (NUSA) economy and politics, with the last few NUSA Presidents being ex-Militech executives.

We gave a brief insight of the space travel in Cyberpunk world when speculating about possible space-related content in Cyberpunk 2077 - a recent first-person open world role playing video game set in the universe of Cyberpunk. When playing the game we came across a short news segment announcing Militech's plans to construct a new colony on Mars and beginning selling (expensive) residential modules in the residential area of the colony:

Full news segment about Militech's new colony on Mars:

Mars Base Alpha by Colin Doublier

Picture of the Day 19/02/2022 - Painting of several SpaceX Starship launch towers equipped with Mechazilla catch system in front of Mars Base Alpha by French urban artist Colin Doublier. More of his art here.

Elon's latest vision for Mars Base Alpha

During Starship update presentation on Thursday SpaceX CEO and lead designer Elon Musk shared to us SpaceX's latest vision for Mars Base Alpha. Here are some images from the animation.

Part of Mars Base Alpha is covered with a large, transparent dome:

Starships are landing on landing pads some distance away from the base:

Settlers arriving at Mars Base Alpha:

Animation of Starship landing at Mars Base Alpha shared by Elon:

SpaceX Starship update 2022

On February 10th SpaceX CEO and lead designer Elon Musk provided the latest update of SpaceX's Starship architecture. Here are slides and animations from his presentation.

Animation of Starship launch and arrival to Mars Base Alpha [updated on April 2023]:

Full presentation:

Slides from the presentation

Starship specifications:

Super Heavy booster specifications:

Spaceport on Phobos (concept art for Aliens: Colonial Marines)

Digital paintings of a spaceport on Phobos, the closest of two natural Martian moons. These images are concept art for Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) - a first-person shooter (FPS) game set in the universe of Alien franchise. Unfortunately this location didn't make to the final game release.

In Alien's universe (depicted in Alien, Predator & Prometheus movies, games and books) Mars is the first planet colonized by humans in mid-21st century. There are many colonies and military bases on the planet established by both national and commercial entities and housing millions of people. On Phobos there is a commercial research facility experimenting with xenomorphs or aliens - a highly aggressive endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species.

Spaceship leaving Phobos' spaceport. Note the partially terraformed Mars below:

Spaceship landing on Mars by Evgeny Kazantsev

A large spaceship with the design similar to Star Trek's USS Enterprise landing on Mars by Russian sci-fi artist Evgeny Kazantsev from his "Ural Airlines Fantastic Fleet" series. More of his art here.