VIDEO: Mars TV Series Uses Fact, Fiction To Turn Mission To Red Planet Into Reality

By  //  July 31, 2016

BLASTS OFF FROM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

ABOVE VIDEO: The year is 2033, and mankind’s first manned mission to Mars is about to become reality. This is the story of how we make Mars home, told by the pioneers making it possible, (National Geographic video)

Traveling to Mars and setting up a human settlement is not yet a reality, but a new television series promises to give us the closest view yet of how it might actually happen. 

Produced by Hollywood veterans Brian Grazer and Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind), the film is a combination of fact and fiction. It features an international crew of astronauts embarking on a mission to Mars and is interspersed with interviews with very real space travel professionals.

Included in the interviews are space experts like Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX; Peter Diamandis, the founder of the XPrize Foundation; and Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium.

In the brief trailer, each expert offers his or her take on what it will require to really put humans on Mars.

But the foundation of the limited-run series centers on the fictional mission, which includes a fake website announcing theMay 9, 2033 launch of the Daedalus crew. There’s even a meticulously crafted press release that details the launch, which is imagined to take place at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida.

ABOVE VIDEO: The first trailer form National Geoggraphic on the upcoming series about a manned mission to the red planet. 

“Upon successful landing, the crew will immediately begin to secure a limited base camp and is tasked with identification of a subterranean space with access to ice and appropriate geological requirements needed to support a long-term habitation site,” reads the faux press release.

Produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Michael Rosenberg, Mars explores how those predictions about the red planet may, or may not, play out.
Produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Michael Rosenberg, Mars explores how many predictions about the red planet, may, or may not, play out. (Nat Geo Image)

“Once the first human settlement is established, the crew must sustain itself until future landings in 2035 and 2037 expand the settlement with deliveries of both cargo and additional human occupants.”

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Based on the trailer alone, the series appears to be a perfect marriage of science fiction and fact, which may serve to stoke even more excitement around the notion of humans one day making a permanent home on the red planet. The series will debut on National Geographic in November.

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