Here's another image with my Mars Expedition vehicle. The goal here is to show it aerobraking into Mars orbit. There is no postwork except the signature. The flames and lighting took me a bit of time to get satisfactory. After several hours of messing in the DTE, I ended up with three separate spheres: a Blended Transparency, a Fuzzy and a Volumetric, all with tweaked materials. The Mars surface is a custom textured terrain and I added two fuzzy cubes to get the look of a Martian atmosphere. For lighting, I pointed the sun right at the spacecraft to eliminate shadows as much as possible. Then I added a bit of a sky dome to lighten up the scene. I was going to clean up that little flicker of flame up top in post, but then I decided to leave it in. It could be the trail of some paint fleck that fell off or something. Thanks for viewing and commenting (and the favorites!). There is probably at least three more in this series coming in the next week or two. ---- One disadvantage of a six month transit is that the vehicle arrives at Mars with a greater velocity than a more energy efficient eight to nine month transfer. During the dive through Mars's thin atmosphere, the astronauts and vehicle will experience forces approach five times Earth gravity as the vehicle slows enough to enter a transfer orbit toward the moon Phobos. To survive this fiery ride above Mars, all booms have been retracted and the Superdragon and Cargo Node modules have been firmly lashed to the aeroshield. Eventually, the Lander, seen here as the cone expanding towards the shield at the forward part of the stack, will separate to allow two astronauts to spend a brief month on the surface of the Red Planet. In subsequent expeditions, a separately launched habitat module (MarsHab) will land directly on the surface of Mars, and the entire crew will be able to ride the Lander down for an extended stay on Mars. But as of the launch of Expedition One, only a small fraction of Expedition Two, and no portion of MarsHab One have been funded. The Universal Expeditions Foundation is counting on you for your support. UXF is a non-governmental 501(c) tax except organization dedicated to the expansion of the Human Species into the Universe. All contributions are tax deductible to the full extent of the law. Foundational and Estate planning services are available to all interested parties. --Excerpt from UXF promotional material, 2029.