In Light of Insight Lander Success, Nat Geo’s ‘Mars’ Offers Bleak Alternative

NASA’s InSight Lander’s historic descent onto the surface of Mars on Monday exhilaratingly defied extremely bad odds (only 41 percent of previous probes have made it) in order to probe the interior of the red planet. The latest episode of National Geographic’s docudrama Mars, which airs Monday night, offers an alternative view to Mars exploration — one that predicts everything that can go wrong when government support isn’t as robust as what NASA has recently enjoyed.

Caution: Mild spoilers for Mars season two ahead.

In real life, space nerds were overjoyed as InSight, a long-anticipated $813.8-million mission funded by the US government, touched down: NASA’s engineers busted out secret handshakes, Bill Nye got lit on Twitter, and even Mike Pence couldn’t help but call from the White House. But the new second season of Mars sketches out the problems that could arise when the government needs supplementation from the private sector, much as companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are now starting to help NASA with its output.

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