Artemis rockets (SLS & Starship) that will get us to the Moon - infographic by Tony Bela

Australian space illustrator Tony Bela has created an infographic of Artemis rockets – NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), boosting Orion crew capsule to lunar orbit, and SpaceX's Human Landing System (known as Lunar Starship) – that will get the humanity back to the surface of the Moon.

You can download the infographic in its original resolution here.

"For All Mankind" season 3 brings space race to Mars

Soviets and US are joined by a private company Helios for a three way race to Mars in the alternate 1990s of For All Mankind season 3. The alternate history sci-fi TV series are 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.

The intention of the show is each season to jump about a decade further into the increasingly diverging reality of the show. Season 3 depicts alternate 1992 to 1995 when a race to establish first human base on Mars is facing various dangers for all of the participants. Here is a large collection of HD images from season 3 of the show. First part of the collection contains images with only minor spoilers, not revealing major story plots besides those already known from season 3 trailer.

The actual race starts with Helio's Phoenix launching from low Earth orbit, NASA's Sojourner from the Moon and Soviet Mars-94 directly from Earth:

Mars colony in Moonshot (2022) movie

Moonshot is recently released (March 2022) science fiction teen comedy set in 2049 when trips to Mars has become routine for skilled or wealthy people. A rich, skilled girl (Lana Condor) and a poor, "mediocre" boy (Cole Sprouse) travel together to Mars, each for their own reasons, and after arrival they both discover those reasons were wrong. Although the movie by itself is quite silly with childish dialogues and cheap interior sets, the CGI for Mars colony exteriors is really good. Here are some HD images from the movie:

VR tour of SpaceX Starship interior concept by Paul King

British interior architect / designer Paul King has updated his concept of SpaceX's Starship interior with an interactive VR tour created by Ryan Thomas and modelled by Jen Christensen & Dale Rutherford. His concept divides Starship's pressurized living space into six 2.5m high levels and is designed for 20 (one shift) to 40 (two shifts sharing the same crew pods) passengers.

Explore the interactive VR tour HERE

Detailed concept HERE

Here are some images from the VR tour. Flight deck (level 6):

One of the crew pods (level 4):

EVA area (level 1):

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.