Flag of Mars "red Mars and two moons in blue field above a diagonal, white below". In Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 science-fiction novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", a flag of Mars is hastily improvised, consisting of "the field in white and the sigil of Mars in red". In The Expanse television series, based on "The Expanse" series of novels by James S. A. Corey, the Martian Congressional Republic is the governing body that rules over the inhabitants of Mars and is one of the two human superpowers in the series. Its flag is reminiscent of Mars and its two moons, Phobos and
Colonization of Mars of life forms, including humans, to survive unaided on Mars's surface. Some ideas of possible technologies that may be able to contribute to the actual terraforming of Mars have been conjectured, but none would be able to bring the entire planet into the Earth-like science fiction habitat pictured. Mars lacks enough gravity to hold on to any kind of substantial atmosphere, which in turn means that the planet will remain cold and cloudless, and the extremely scarce surface water frozen. Mars has no global magnetosphere as Earth does. Combined with a thin atmosphere, this permits a significant amount of ionizing