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".
2012 in spaceflight
Numerous significant milestones in robotic spaceflight occurred in 2012, including the landing of NASA's "Curiosity" rover on Mars in August, and the first commercial resupply missions to the ISS in May and October. The latter also marked the first fully operational use of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Elsewhere in the Solar System, NASA's "Dawn" spacecraft completed its mission to 4 Vesta in September 2012, while China achieved its first asteroid flyby in December.