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".
List of missions to minor planets
Spacecraft visits to minor planets have mostly been flybys, and have ranged from dedicated missions to incidental flybys and targets of opportunity for spacecraft that have already completed their missions. The first spacecraft to visit an asteroid was "Galileo", which flew past 951 Gaspra in October 1991; an incidental encounter while the probe was en route to Jupiter. The first dedicated mission was "NEAR Shoemaker", which was launched in February 1996, and entered orbit around 433 Eros in February 2000, having first flown past 253 Mathilde. "NEAR" was also the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid, surviving what was intended to be an impact with Eros at 20:01 on 12 February 2001 at the planned end of its mission. As a result of its unexpected survival, the spacecraft's mission was extended until 1 March to allow data to be collected from the surface.