Blue Sky on Mars
The cover of the album features an image by Viking 1, the first spacecraft to land on Mars; the album's liner notes include additional imagery of the planet's landscape as taken by the spacecraft on July 20, 1976. The text on the cover was done by fantastic artist Roger Dean, best known for his work on album covers for bands such as Yes. The album's title comes from the tour in the film "Total Recall".
Mars Pathfinder
This mission was the first of a series of missions to Mars that included rovers, and was the first successful lander since the two "Vikings" landed on the red planet in 1976. Although the Soviet Union successfully sent rovers to the Moon as part of the Lunokhod program in the 1970s, its attempts to use rovers in its Mars program failed.