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".
Rover (space exploration)
The Mars Pathfinder mission included "Sojourner", the first rover to successfully deploy on another planet. NASA, the space agency of the United States, launched Mars Pathfinder on 4 December 1996; it landed on Mars in a region called Chryse Planitia on 4 July 1997. From its landing until the final data transmission on 27 September 1997, Mars Pathfinder returned 16,500 images from the lander and 550 images from "Sojourner", as well as data from more than 15 chemical analyses of rocks and soil and extensive data on winds and other weather factors.