The next frontier in space exploration is Mars, the red planet--and human habitation of Mars isn't much farther off. Now the National Geographic Channel goes years fast-forward with "Mars," a six-part series documenting and dramatizing the next 25 years as humans land on and learn to live on Mars. This companion book to the series explores the science behind the mission and the challenges awaiting those brave individuals. Filled with vivid photographs taken on Earth, in space, and on Mars; arresting maps; and commentary from the world's top planetary scientists, this fascinating book will take you millions of miles away--and decades into the future--to our next home in the solar system.

In the year 2042, Captain Stan Rhodes returns to planet Mars with a fresh crew and resumes exploring a region called the Cydonia Complex. Investigating architectural wonders from an ancient civilization, they revisit a magnificent five-sided pyramid discovered on the first mission and survey its subterranean passageways. When searching for the ruins of a city called Gaugamar forever buried in the sand, the team is asked by mission planners to penetrate the outer shell of another monument. This leads to them breaching a burial shrine from an older kingdom built for a monarch named Nemnasu. Within the funerary chamber of this monument, they encounter an extraordinary life force, and a text explains how this entity, comprised of a mass of energy, came to be interned in the tomb. The mission is further threatened when one of the team contracts an ancient disease. Coping with horrifically monstrous changes in this individual's physiology causes this crewmember to become mentally deranged, and in this altered state, this person is soon no longer recognized as human, but is seen as something entirely different. Come and join this crew of five as they make new discoveries while struggling to survive on the red planet. This book is the second in a series by David Gatesbury and is preceded by Walking on Mars: A Journey to the Red Planet. Click here to check out the first book in this series!

Jim Marlow and his strange-looking Martian friend Willis were allowed to travel only so far. But one day Willis unwittingly tuned into a treacherous plot that threatened all the colonists on Mars, and it set Jim off on a terrfying adventure that could save--or destroy--them all "From the Paperback edition."

From Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, Geoffrey A. Landis, comes an epic of near-future exploration of Mars in his debut Nebula Award nominated novel, Mars Crossing. By the middle of the 21st century, humanity has finally landed men on Mars–only to watch helplessly as the first two missions end in catastrophe and death. With resources running out, a third–and perhaps final–mission to Mars is hastily mounted, with a crew of four men and two women. But from the moment of their arrival on Mars, everything begins to go wrong. The fuel tanks that were to have supplied their return trip are found corroded and empty. Their supplies are running out and their life support systems are beginning to fail. And any rescue mission won't reach them for months, or even years–if at all. The crew's only hope for survival lies in a desperate plan: an agonizing trek halfway across the surface of Mars to a ship designed to carry only half their number. Torn by conflict and dissent, and troubled by secrets that endanger them all, they must embark on an ordeal that will test them to the limits of endurance.

Since the beginning of human history Mars has been an alluring dream; the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, it has still been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit. Now with the advent of a revolutionary new plan, all this has changed. Leading space exploration authority Robert Zubrin has crafted a daring new blueprint, Mars Direct, presented here with illustrations, photographs, and engaging anecdotes. The Case for Mars is not a vision for the far future or one that will cost us impossible billions. It explains step-by-step how we can use present-day technology to send humans to Mars within ten years; actually produce fuel and oxygen on the planet's surface with Martian natural resources; how we can build bases and settlements; and how we can one day "terraform" Mars; a process that can alter the atmosphere of planets and pave the way for sustainable life.