Filmmakers work on virtual Mars mission

By Tariq Malik

updated 3:55 p.m. ET May 11, 2006

Astronauts are stomping around Mars without ever leaving Earth in Canada, where filming is under way for an ambitious new documentary and a miniseries that blur the line between science fact and fiction.

Clad in spacesuits on sets awash in red dust, actors are portraying future astronauts in the television miniseries "Race to Mars," a Discovery Channel docu-drama aimed at realistically depicting a manned mission to the Red Planet. The three-hour program, as well as a six-part documentary titled "Mars Rising" and a related Internet site called "Mars Interactive," will make their debut in the fall of 2007 on the Discovery Channel and its broadcast partners.

Paul Lewis, president and general manager of Discovery Channel Canada, said the Mars program highlights what would be “the biggest and most exciting, most dangerous human scientific expedition that can be taken in the near term, perhaps in our lifetime.”

“This was a bit of a personal dream of mine to kind of take the mission to Mars,” Lewis told Space.com, adding that he had fond memories of NASA’s Apollo moon missions during his childhood. “Hollywood’s taken a couple of stabs at it, but I didn’t think anybody has done the mission justice and done it in a way that would be truly scientifically authentic.”

Set in 2030
As expected, "Race to Mars" is set in the near future — 2030, to be exact — with China surging ahead of the United States and other nations in Mars exploration. China’s space ambitions apparently lead to a Red Planet race that prompts Canada, the United States, Russia, France and Japan to mount the first manned Mars mission.

Four men and two women — including a veteran cosmonaut, a French nuclear physicist and a Canadian astronaut who, not surprisingly, will play a key role in the mission — will launch toward Mars in the upcoming series, which will star actor Michael Riley ("Supervolcano," "This is Wonderland") as astronaut Capt. Rick Erwin, Discovery Channel officials said. Production is under way in Montreal and St-Hubert, Quebec, and will continue through mid-June.

The $18.1 million ($20 million Canadian) production — which covers "Race to Mars," an added one-hour faux-documentary retrospective by the flight’s “astronauts,” plus "Mars Rising" and the Web site — is being billed by Discovery Channel as the most expensive science television project under way in 2006, though program managers are hoping its realism and detail will prove worthwhile. More than two years were spent in preparation for filming, including meetings with Mars and spaceflight experts, Lewis said.

“One of the important goals, frankly, for us was to see if we could start to generate public interest, public excitement about human exploration of space again,” Lewis said. “It’s obviously something that really hasn’t fired people’s imaginations for a long time. … Our feeling is people are willing to be inspired again.”

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