History UsefulNotes / MARS

* The Russian collaborative novel ''The Road to Mars'' involves a [[MultinationalTeam multinational crew]] of the ''Ares'' spacecraft on its way to the red planet. In a twist, no one expected this particular crew to go. The crew (all male) consists of two Russians, two Americans (one of them black), an Italian, and a Frenchman, thus representing three power blocs and space agencies (Russia/Roscosmos, US/NASA, and EU/ESA, respectively). China is left out and chooses to send their own mission to Mars in the form of a two-man crew on the poorly-tested ''Millennium Boat''. Part of the novel involves a race between the two craft, as both crews have orders to be the first to get there, although, in private, both commanders would gladly give up the chance to be first in favor of cooperation to make sure everyone makes it back. During the flight, strange things are happening aboard the ''Ares'', which appear to be connected with something found on the planet by earlier probes.

* Mars held an important position in the ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' universe from the nanoswarms through the first federation era, around one or two thousand years. It's still the most populated and influential planet in Solsys by the setting's present day, though the system itself is fairly inconsequential.

* Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/KnownSpace'' books and stories feature native Martians; to be fair, the first few stories were published just before the Mariner landings. They eventually get [[spoiler:killed off in ''Literature/{{Protector}}'' by the KnightTemplar Brennan, who has been mutated into a superintelligent being with inhuman motivations]]. However, ''Literature/TheRingworldEngineers'' has some [[spoiler:surviving on the Ringworld's Map of Mars]]. Niven's Martians swim through sand and have alien biochemistry not based on water.

Historically while the white areas seen on Mars's poles with a telescope were correctly identified as polar caps of water ice first and carbon dioxide plus water ices later, and as happened with the lunar "maria" that were thought at first to be actual seas of water instead of plains of solidified lava, the dark spots ("albedo features") that can be seen in Mars' surface with an Earth-based telescope as in the image to the right were considered actual seas, astronomers creating in such way [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_albedo_features_NASA_1970.JPG a nomenclature]] that while today obsolete is still used by amateur astronomers and that uses names drawn from the myths, history and geography of classical antiquity; dark features were named after ancient seas and rivers, light areas after islands and legendary lands[[note]]Actual Martian surface features located in the same place of such albedo features would inherit such names more or less modified (i.e., the Mare Cimmerium would become Terra Cimmeria and Nyx Olympica the Olympus Mons[[/note]]. In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens in order to carry water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction in the first half of the 20th century. Later on, when it was clear Mars lacks large bodies of liquid water, it was thought such features were areas of vegetation changing its extension as Martian seasons progressed.

* Creator/HGWells's ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' is one of the best-known examples of a Martian invasion of Earth.
** Although the action would not actually shift to Mars itself until the unauthorized sequel, ''[[UsefulNotes/ThomasEdison Edison's]] Conquest of Mars'' by Garrett P. Serviss.
* Wells' contemporary [[Creator/KurdLasswitz Kurd Laßwitz]] in ''Auf zwei Planeten'' ("On Two Planets", 1897) portrays Mars (Nu to the Martians) as the densely populated home of a highly advanced civilization capable of interplanetary travel, which it uses in a BenevolentAlienInvasion of Earth. Politically the Martians are organized in a planet-wide federation of 154 states governed by parliamentary democracy.

* Vol. 2, issue 1 of ''ComicBook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'' takes place there. Where else can you see Literature/JohnCarterOfMars and Literature/GullivarOfMars teaming up with [[Literature/OutOfTheSilentPlanet Sorns]] to take down H.G. Wells' [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds tripod-invaders]]? And in Vol. 4 on we learn it's the home of superhero Marsman, and they've also got the automated murder-house from ''[[Literature/TheMartianChronicles Usher II]]''.

[[folder: Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': The God of War, Franchise/WonderWoman's enemy, used to have his base here, generally because the two shared a name. The idea was lost after ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'', where he got renamed Ares, his Greek counterpart.

[[folder: Film]]

[[folder: Literature]]

[[folder: Live-Action TV]]

[[folder: Radio]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games]]

[[folder: Video Games]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]

[[folder: Comic Books]]

[[folder: Film]]

[[folder: Literature]]

[[folder: Live-Action TV]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics]]

[[folder: Podcast]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games]]

[[folder: Video Games]]

[[folder: Webcomics]]

[[folder: Web Original]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]
* ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'':

-->'''Zim:''' Why would you do that?
-->'''Martian hologram:''' Because it was [[RuleOfCool cool]].
* In the 80's animated series ''WesternAnimation/StarCom,'' Mars was long ago the home to a vanished advanced civilization, and archaeologists are diligently exploring any buried ruins they can find.

[[folder: Real Life]]

Historically while the white areas seen on Mars' poles with a telescope were correctly identified as polar caps of water ice first and carbon dioxide plus water ices later, and as happened with the lunar "maria" that were thought at first to be actual seas of water instead of plains of solidified lava, the dark spots ("albedo features") that can be seen in Mars' surface with an Earth-based telescope as in the image to the right were considered actual seas, astronomers creating in such way [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_albedo_features_NASA_1970.JPG a nomenclature]] that while today obsolete is still used by amateur astronomers and that uses names drawn from the myths, history and geography of classical antiquity; dark features were named after ancient seas and rivers, light areas after islands and legendary lands[[note]]Actual Martian surface features located in the same place of such albedo features would inherit such names more or less modified (ie, the Mare Cimmerium would become Terra Cimmeria and Nyx Olympica the Olympus Mons[[/note]]. In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens in order to carry water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction of the first half of the 20th century. Later on, when it was clear Mars lacks large bodies of liquid water, it was thought such features were areas of vegetation changing its extension as Martian seasons progressed.

Mars regained its prominence in human imagination in 1976 when the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_1 Viking 1]] probe reached the planet; equipped with more advanced technology, it was able to take a number of impressively high resolution photographs. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29 One of these showed]] [[ItKindOfLooksLikeAFace what appears to be a human face]]. Though quickly debunked by every legitimate authority, it has taken its place alongside the Nazca lines and the Pyramids of Giza in conspiracy lore — especially as one of the photographs from the mission ''[[RevealingCoverup has yet to be declassified]]''. Fictional representations of Mars were changed as well; no longer a destination, but a stepping-stone to greater glories in the form of ancient ruins filled with LostTechnology, waiting for humanity to discover it and thereby leapfrog into the stars. One way or another, that particular argument will remain unsettled until [[IWantMyJetpack people actually go there unregulated]].

More modern stories tend to have Mars [[ColonizedSolarSystem being colonized]], either as a plot point or part of the Back Story. This isn't an unlikely scenario in real life; it has more of the basic elements needed for life than any other non-Earth world in the solar system and it's quite similar to Earth in several aspects, including day length (24h 39m 35.244s), temperature (-2 to -87 °C, chilly, but overlaps a fair amount with Earth, albeit the coldest parts of Earth), and an atmosphere (although Martian "air" is mostly carbon dioxide and averages about 1/100th of the Earth's pressure). It's also our neighbor along with UsefulNotes/{{Venus}} (which we have yet to keep a probe functioning on for [[DeathWorld more than a few minutes]]). For these reasons, Mars is the planet that is most frequently subject to [[{{Terraform}} Terraforming]]. Strangely, regardless of how otherwise Earth-like it may be, Mars tends to retain its distinct red soil. The weak gravity and thin atmosphere also means that dust storms go up to eleven on Mars. Every so often, a gigantic dust storm ''will cover the entire planet'' in a thick cloud of particles.

Despite its many Earthlike qualities, Mars is nowhere near as big as the Earth. It's only half the Earth's diameter and its surface gravity is only 0.38 g (38% of Earth's surface gravity). The reason for this is that when Jupiter migrated inward towards the Sun, it robbed Mars of material to form with; scientists believe that had Jupiter not drifted inward, Mars would have been the same size as Earth and Venus. The ''total'' surface area of Mars is about equal to the ''land'' surface area of the Earth (i.e. that small portion of the Earth's surface that isn't under water). Nevertheless, Mars has a canyon system (Valles Marineris) that's far, far larger than Earth's Grand Canyon, and a volcano (Olympus Mons[[note]]Not to be confused with the Olympus Mons from Myth/ClassicalMythology. Or OlympusMons[[/note]]) that's far, far larger than Earth's Mount Everest.[[note]]The reason is that there is ''no'' continental drift on Mars, so the same vent was used over and over by Mars, unlike Earth, where the vents will drift — just ask the Yellowstone Caldera, or UsefulNotes/{{Hawaii}}.[[/note]] Unlike Everest or most other large mountains on Earth, Olympus Mons is not steep at all. On the contrary, it rises so gradually that in terms of land area it's roughly the size of France, and a person standing at the base of Olympus Mons would be unable to see its summit because it would actually be over the horizon. Olympus Mons and Mariner Canyon both lie on a region called the Tharsis Bulge, essentially a seven-kilometer high (that's ''before'' adding the altitude of the volcanoes) bump on the planet's surface caused by a massive upward magma flow beneath that entire area. Olympus Mons is the largest of ''many'' volcanoes sitting on the bulge. When these volcanoes were being formed, the pressure caused by the upward magma flow caused a part of the crust to ''split open'', creating the Valles Marineris. Depending on how the boundary of the Tharsis Bulge is defined, it covers up to twenty-five percent of Mars's surface area.

The most damaging is that Mars has a core that's dead, with very little tectonic activity,[[note]][=InSight=]'s SEIS seismometer has picked [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0544-y almost 200]] weak marsquakes until September 2019, and [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01836-3 there's evidence]] of such probe having landed on a part of the planet underlaid by a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superplume mantle superplume]][[/note]] so there's no magnetic field to keep the solar wind from keeping the planet more or less sterile. Although science holds out hope that they will [[OnceGreenMars one day discover evidence that life once existed on Mars]], there's very little hope they will find life living there now.[[note]]This might seem like a problem for colonization, but isn't really; building largely underground — as most serious proposals call for — handles the radiation problem pretty handily. Many current proposals for colonization indicate that lava tubes — basically big caves where ancient lava had flowed underground and then shrank as it cooled, leaving a big empty tunnel — would be a good spot to settle.[[/note]] Worse than that, the Martian soil is now known to be extremely rich in hexavalent chromium (known for short as [=HexChrome=]).[[note]]You may recognize it as the chemical that ''Film/ErinBrockovich'''s law firm sued PG&E over for contaminating the water supply in Hinckley, California.[[/note]] Today, the moons [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfJupiter Europa]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Enceladus]] are considered more likely to currently harbor life, both having verified subterranean liquid water and the protection of their respective home planets' magnetic fields. (Europa's surface ice is also a protective barrier from Jupiter's latent radiation.) While in 2015 it was finally verified that there is indeed liquid water on the surface of Mars, the lack of a magnetic field and toxic soil would still be severe obstacles to life. However, despite the odds, there is a chance extremophiles live inside Mars, after all life has been found to thrive inside of otherwise lethal conditions such as tar pits, geothermal pools, and on the bottom of the ocean in geothermal vents.

Although Mars doesn't have nearly as substantial an atmosphere as Earth (let alone Venus, or the gas giants), it has enough of one that the reduced level of sunlight relative to Earth (40%)[[note]]Coincidentally, this is about the same level of sunlight that Venus, which gets 1.9 times more sunlight than Earth but only 20% of which reaches its own surface, receives[[/note]] that reaches Mars is able to diffuse in the sky (the large amounts of dust in the atmosphere aid immensely in this process). Most observers describe the daylight sky as being "butterscotch" or similar in color. Amusingly, because of the way sunlight is refracted, at sunrise and sunset the sky around the sun is more bluish, the opposite of the reddish hue the sky around a rising or setting sun takes on in our own atmosphere. The Martian night sky resembles our own in many ways, with the exception of two tiny moons rather than one large one (see below), and of course the presence of nearby Earth and its Moon, though with the naked eye they are not always discernable as two distinct objects. Even at their brightest, both Earth (-2.5) and the Moon (+0.9) are dimmer than Venus (-3.2) as seen from Mars, making it the brightest planet as seen from all three of the other inner planets.

And as we all know from pop-psychology, [[MarsAndVenusGenderContrast men are from there]]. [[Music/EltonJohn Not the kind of place to raise your kids.]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Literature]]

* Creator/HGWells' ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' is one of the best-known examples of a Martian invasion of Earth.

* ''Literature/TheShipThatSailedToMars'' is an early (1923) work of ScienceFantasy that follows the adventures of a human and his fairy companions, who construct and crew a magically endowed sailing ship that takes them from Earth to Mars. They find the red planet to have an Earth-like climate (with breathable atmosphere, liquid water, and Earth-like weather patterns) and a thriving population of fairyfolk, mermaids, and other fantastic creatures. The capital Martian Fairy City is built on a network of glorious canals.

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]

* ''Series/MyFavoriteMartian'', which started a couple of years before the Mariner, and ended shortly afterwards. The 1999 movie obviously was well post-Mariner, but played with its blatant scientific inaccuracy in a funny opening sequence which shows scientists looking at the wrong part of the planet and missing, by about half a mile, a gigantic Martian city.

[[folder:Radio]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]

[[folder:Video Games]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* Many events in [[spoiler:the past]], [[spoiler:present]] and [[spoiler:future]] of Manga/BattleAngelAlita happen on Mars.

*** But then, no Gundam series before ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronbloodedOrphans'' really ever ventured away from the Earth Sphere. F90 and Crossbone series are a little known spinoffs, and any other series paid the Outer System only a mention at best. Even ''[[Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam Zeta Gundam]]'', which featured a Jovian, Paptimus Scirocco, still have him visit the Earth Sphere.

** The Red Planet is the home of the series villains in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamAGE''. It was revealed that the Unknown Enemy are Martian colonists abandoned by the Earth Federation, and because of what it thinks to be betrayal, have initiated a revenge by attacking colonies in the Earth's orbit. However, they stay mainly in a space colony in Martian orbit due to the botched terraforming.

* Whenever asked, Chao Lingshen of ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'' would claim that she was from Mars. Thanks to events in chapter 257, [[spoiler:this no longer seems so random with the confirmation of [[MagicWorld Mundus Magicus]] being located on Mars itself]].
** ...sort of. [[spoiler:Mundus Magicus is essentially "[[AnotherDimension out of phase]]" with Mars. It occupies the same area and the geographic features more or less line up, but it's not "really" Mars. Just [[LayeredWorld layered]] on top of it.]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]

* ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfWonderWoman2016'': Ares used to have a base/home on Mars, but as Tomas Byde discovers when he goes to confront the fading god it has been long abandoned and what is left of it lies in ruin. It is hinted that this is a reflection of the way the Olympians are dying and loosing their power.

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Literature]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]

[[folder:Podcast]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''[[http://mars.takeonthegame.com/ Take On Mars]]'' allows gamers to explore Mars based on completely up to date data. They can also explore with the current probes like Curiosity, or [[RuleOfCool drive around in a weaponized SUV]].

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* ''Webcomic/TheStormrunners'' takes places 3.5 billion years ago, when Mars ''kinda'' resembles the pre-Mariner version, canals and all, but its ecology has been wrecked by a centuries-long war against invaders from who-knows-where. Then somehow a couple of time-displaced humans crash land there to complicate things.

[[folder:Web Original]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]

[[folder:Real Life]]

* ''Doom 3'' and the original ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' take place on Mars and its moons respectively. Which, miraculously, all seem to have Earth-normal surface gravity as established by the rate at which your character falls when stepping off a high place. (Unless your SpaceMarine is really two centimeters tall.)

** After the first human (Phillip J. Fry the second) set foot on it in the twenty-first century, Mars has been terraformed, first in order to facilitate the construction of Mars University, then later by farmers and ranchers. There are also jungles, which feature birds, monkeys, tigers and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers elephants]], in lieu of the ones on Earth being long gone. And there's the massive gambling city Mars Vegas. Mars' foliage also contains a great many marijuana plants.

The most damaging is that Mars has a core that's dead, with very little tectonic activity,[[note]][=InSight=]'s SEIS seismometer has picked [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0544-y almost 200]] weak marsquakes until September 2019, and [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01836-3 there's evidence]] of such probe having landed on a part of the planet underlaid by a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superplume mantle superplume]][[/note]] so there's no magnetic field to keep the solar wind from keeping the planet more or less sterile. Although science holds out hope that they will [[OnceGreenMars one day discover evidence that life once existed on Mars]], there's very little hope they will find life living there now.[[note]]This might seem like a problem for colonization, but isn't really; building largely underground — as most serious proposals call for — handles the radiation problem pretty handily. Many current proposals for colonization indicate that lava tubes — basically big caves where ancient lava had flowed underground and then shrank as it cooled, leaving a big empty tunnel — would be a good spot to settle.[[/note]] Worse than that, the Martian soil is now known to be extremely rich in hexavalent chromium (known for short as [=HexChrome=]), one of the most potent carcinogens known to man.[[note]]You may recognize it as the chemical that ''Film/ErinBrockovich'''s law firm sued PG&E over for contaminating the water supply in Hinckley, California.[[/note]] Today, the moons [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfJupiter Europa]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Enceladus]] are considered more likely to currently harbor life, both having verified subterranean liquid water and the protection of their respective home planets' magnetic fields. (Europa's surface ice is also a protective barrier from Jupiter's latent radiation.) While in 2015 it was finally verified that there is indeed liquid water on the surface of Mars, the lack of a magnetic field and toxic soil would still be severe obstacles to life. However, despite the odds, there is a chance extremophiles live inside Mars, after all life has been found to thrive inside of otherwise lethal conditions such as tar pits, geothermal pools, and on the bottom of the ocean in geothermal vents.

* ''Manga/TerraForMARS'' is about a {{Terraforming}} process on Mars using [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke genetically engineered cockroaches]]. It ends up [[GoneHorriblyWrong going horribly wrong.]]

Historically while the white areas seen on Mars' poles with a telescope were correctly identified as polar caps of water ice first and carbon dioxide plus water ices later, and as happened with the lunar "maria" that were thought at first to be actual seas of water instead of plains of solidified lava, the dark spots ("albedo features") that can be seen in Mars' surface with an Earth-based telescope as in the image to the right were considered actual seas, astronomers creating in such way [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_albedo_features_NASA_1970.JPG a nomenclature]] that while today obsolete is still used by amateur astronomers and that uses names drawn from the myths, history and geography of classical antiquity; dark features were named after ancient seas and rivers, light areas after islands and legendary lands[[note]]Actual Martian surface features located in the same place of such albedo features would inherit such names[[/note]]. In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens in order to carry water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction of the first half of the 20th century. Later on, when it was clear Mars lacks large bodies of liquid water, it was thought such features were areas of vegetation changing its extension as Martian seasons progressed.

The most damaging is that Mars has a core that's dead, with very little tectonic activity,[[note]][=InSight=]'s SEIS seismometer has picked [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0544-y almost 200]] weak marsquakes until September 2019, and [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01836-3 there's evidence]] of such probe having landed on a part of the planet underlaid by a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superplume]][[/note]] so there's no magnetic field to keep the solar wind from keeping the planet more or less sterile. Although science holds out hope that they will [[OnceGreenMars one day discover evidence that life once existed on Mars]], there's very little hope they will find life living there now.[[note]]This might seem like a problem for colonization, but isn't really; building largely underground — as most serious proposals call for — handles the radiation problem pretty handily. Many current proposals for colonization indicate that lava tubes — basically big caves where ancient lava had flowed underground and then shrank as it cooled, leaving a big empty tunnel — would be a good spot to settle.[[/note]] Worse than that, the Martian soil is now known to be extremely rich in hexavalent chromium (known for short as [=HexChrome=]), one of the most potent carcinogens known to man.[[note]]You may recognize it as the chemical that ''Film/ErinBrockovich'''s law firm sued PG&E over for contaminating the water supply in Hinckley, California.[[/note]] Today, the moons [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfJupiter Europa]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Enceladus]] are considered more likely to currently harbor life, both having verified subterranean liquid water and the protection of their respective home planets' magnetic fields. (Europa's surface ice is also a protective barrier from Jupiter's latent radiation.) While in 2015 it was finally verified that there is indeed liquid water on the surface of Mars, the lack of a magnetic field and toxic soil would still be severe obstacles to life. However, despite the odds, there is a chance extremophiles live inside Mars, after all life has been found to thrive inside of otherwise lethal conditions such as tar pits, geothermal pools, and on the bottom of the ocean in geothermal vents.

The most damaging is that Mars has a core that's dead, with very little tectonic activity,[[note]][=InSight=]'s SEIS seismometer has picked [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0544-y almost 200]] weak marsquakes until September 2019[[/note]] so there's no magnetic field to keep the solar wind from keeping the planet more or less sterile. Although science holds out hope that they will [[OnceGreenMars one day discover evidence that life once existed on Mars]], there's very little hope they will find life living there now.[[note]]This might seem like a problem for colonization, but isn't really; building largely underground — as most serious proposals call for — handles the radiation problem pretty handily. Many current proposals for colonization indicate that lava tubes — basically big caves where ancient lava had flowed underground and then shrank as it cooled, leaving a big empty tunnel — would be a good spot to settle.[[/note]] Worse than that, the Martian soil is now known to be extremely rich in hexavalent chromium (known for short as [=HexChrome=]), one of the most potent carcinogens known to man.[[note]]You may recognize it as the chemical that ''Film/ErinBrockovich'''s law firm sued PG&E over for contaminating the water supply in Hinckley, California.[[/note]] Today, the moons [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfJupiter Europa]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Enceladus]] are considered more likely to currently harbor life, both having verified subterranean liquid water and the protection of their respective home planets' magnetic fields. (Europa's surface ice is also a protective barrier from Jupiter's latent radiation.) While in 2015 it was finally verified that there is indeed liquid water on the surface of Mars, the lack of a magnetic field and toxic soil would still be severe obstacles to life. However, despite the odds, there is a chance extremophiles live inside Mars, after all life has been found to thrive inside of otherwise lethal conditions such as tar pits, geothermal pools, and on the bottom of the ocean in geothermal vents.

Although Mars doesn't have nearly as substantial an atmosphere as Earth (let alone Venus, or the gas giants), it has enough of one that the reduced level of sunlight relative to Earth (40%)[[note]]Coincidentally, this is about the same level of sunlight that Venus, which gets 1.9 times more sunlight than Earth but only 20% of which reaches its our surface, receives[[/note]] that reaches Mars is able to diffuse in the sky (the large amounts of dust in the atmosphere aid immensely in this process). Most observers describe the daylight sky as being "butterscotch" or similar in color. Amusingly, because of the way sunlight is refracted, at sunrise and sunset the sky around the sun is more bluish, the opposite of the reddish hue the sky around a rising or setting sun takes on in our own atmosphere. The Martian night sky resembles our own in many ways, with the exception of two tiny moons rather than one large one (see below), and of course the presence of nearby Earth and its Moon, though with the naked eye they are not always discernable as two distinct objects. Even at their brightest, both Earth (-2.5) and the Moon (+0.9) are dimmer than Venus (-3.2) as seen from Mars, making it the brightest planet as seen from all three of the other inner planets.

Although Mars doesn't have nearly as substantial an atmosphere as Earth (let alone Venus, or the gas giants), it has enough of one that the reduced level of sunlight that reaches Mars is able to diffuse in the sky (the large amounts of dust in the atmosphere aid immensely in this process). Most observers describe the daylight sky as being "butterscotch" or similar in color. Amusingly, because of the way sunlight is refracted, at sunrise and sunset the sky around the sun is more bluish, the opposite of the reddish hue the sky around a rising or setting sun takes on in our own atmosphere. The Martian night sky resembles our own in many ways, with the exception of two tiny moons rather than one large one (see below), and of course the presence of nearby Earth and its Moon, though with the naked eye they are usually not discernable as two distinct objects. Even at their brightest, both Earth (-2.5) and the Moon (+0.9) are dimmer than Venus (-3.2) as seen from Mars, making it the brightest planet as seen from all three of the other inner planets.

More modern stories tend to have Mars [[ColonizedSolarSystem being colonized]], either as a plot point or part of the Back Story. This isn't an unlikely scenario in real life; it has more of the basic elements needed for life than any other non-Earth world in the solar system and it's quite similar to Earth in several aspects, including day length (24h 39m 35.244s), temperature (-2 to -87 °C, chilly, but overlaps a fair amount with Earth, albeit the coldest parts of Earth), and an atmosphere (although Martian "air" is mostly carbon dioxide and averages about 1/100th of the Earth's pressure). It's also our neighbor along with UsefulNotes/{{Venus}} (which we have yet to keep a probe functioning on for [[DeathWorld more than a few minutes]]). For these reasons, Mars is the planet that is most frequently subject to [[{{Terraform}} Terraforming]]. Strangely, regardless of how otherwise Earth-like it may be, Mars tends to retain its distinct red soil. The weak gravity and thin atmosphere also means that dust storms go UpToEleven on Mars. Every so often, a gigantic dust storm ''will cover the entire planet'' in a thick cloud of particles.

-->-- '''[[UsefulNotes/SpaceX Elon Musk]]'''

Historically while the white areas seen on Mars' poles with a telescope were correctly identified as polar caps of water ice first and carbon dioxide plus water ices later, and as happened with the lunar "mare" that were thought at first to be actual seas of water instead of plains of solidified lava, the dark spots ("albedo features") that can be seen in Mars' surface with an Earth-based telescope as in the image to the right were considered actual seas, astronomers creating in such way [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_albedo_features_NASA_1970.JPG a nomenclature]] that while today obsolete is still used by amateur astronomers using names drawn from the myths, history and geography of classical antiquity; dark features were named after ancient seas and rivers, light areas after islands and legendary lands. In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens in order to carry water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction of the first half of the 20th century. Later on, when it was clear Mars lacks large bodies of liquid water, it was thought such features were areas of vegetation changing its extension as Martian seasons progressed.

Historically and as happened with the lunar "mare" that were thought at first to be actual seas of water instead of plains of solidified lava, the dark spots ("albedo features") that can be seen in Mars' surface with an Earth-based telescope as in the image to the right were considered actual seas, astronomers creating in such way [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_albedo_features_NASA_1970.JPG a nomenclature]] that while today obsolete is still used by amateur astronomers using names drawn from the myths, history and geography of classical antiquity; dark features were named after ancient seas and rivers, light areas after islands and legendary lands. In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens in order to carry water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction of the first half of the 20th century. Later on, when it was clear Mars lacks large bodies of liquid water, it was thought such features were areas of vegetation changing its extension as Martian seasons progressed.

Historically and as happened with the lunar "mare" that were thought at first to be actual seas of water instead of plains of solidified lava, the dark spots ("albedo features") that can be seen in Mars' surface with an Earth-based telescope as in the image to the right were considered actual seas, astronomers creating in such way [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_albedo_features_NASA_1970.JPG a nomenclature]] that while today obsolete is still used by amateur astronomers consisting on names given to different regions in the Classic era plus mythological names. In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens in irder to carry water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction of the first half of the 20th century. Later on, when it was clear Mars lacks large bodies of liquid water, it was thought such features were areas of vegetation changing its extension as Martian seasons progressed.

Historically and as happened with the lunar "mare" that were thought at first to be actual seas of water instead of plains of solidified lava, the dark spots ("albedo features") that can be seen in Mars' surface with an Earth-based telescope as in the image to the right were considered actual seas, astronomers creating in such way [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_albedo_features_NASA_1970.JPG a nomenclature] that while today obsolete is still used by amateur astronomers consisting on names given to different regions in the Classic era plus mythological names. In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens in irder to carry water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction of the first half of the 20th century. Later on, when it was clear Mars lacks large bodies of liquid water, it was thought such features were areas of vegetation changing its extension as Martian seasons progressed.

In the late 19th century, astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli [[note]]Uncle to the surrealist couturier UsefulNotes/ElsaSchiaparelli[[/note]] observed what appeared to be water channels on Mars. When his writings were translated into English, the Italian word ''canali'' was misleadingly translated as canals (the actual Italian word for "canals" is "canal''e''", with an "e"). For decades afterwards, it was widely believed that these had been built by intelligent aliens. Predictably, Martians featured in a large amount of ScienceFiction of the first half of the 20th century.

However, when UsefulNotes/{{NASA}}'s ''Mariner 4'' probe flew past Mars in 1965, it was conclusively shown that the canals didn't actually exist. When the Viking probes landed ([[UsefulNotes/TheSpaceRace the Soviets got there first]] with Mars 3, but the lander was taken out by a dust storm 14.5 seconds after landing), the planet was shown to be lifeless, and the concept of Martians quickly became discredited. More recent observations suggest that Mars may have supported life in the distant past, and some people still cling to hope that life may reside underground, no matter how unlikely it is. However, the Red Planet has had such a hold on human imagination for so long that it is not going to be lost as a setting any time soon.

And as we all know from pop-psychology, [[MarsAndVenusGenderContrast men are from there]].