Solar Sci-Fi (i.e. hard science fiction involving near-term scenarios within our solar system) has gone big time in the past few years with the major financial successes of the films Gravity and The Martian. The TV series The Expanse, which depicts conflicts among settlers of Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and Earth, has lasted 3 seasons on the SyFy Channel and will now continue on Amazon Prime:

• Amazon Studios’ chief recounts Jeff Bezos’ push to save ‘The Expanse’ – GeekWire
• Jeff Bezos says Amazon will pick up sci-fi TV saga ‘The Expanse’ – GeekWire

Sean Penn will headline a new TV series on Hulu called “The First” about humans going to Mars : The First (Hulu): Sean Penn’s Mars TV Series Debuts First Plot Details | IndieWire

Set in the 2030s, the eight-episode first season is mainly set on Earth as the astronauts prepare for the journey to the red planet and NASA forms a partnership with a private company to support the trip.

• The First (TV series) – Wikipedia
• The First (TV Series 2018– ) – IMDb

And on the Solar Sci-Reality front, the film First Man with Ryan Gosling looks to be an epic re-telling of how Neil Armstrong came to take that first step onto the lunar surface:

The film is to be released in the fall.

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