Blues for a Red Planet

Blues for a Red Planet is the fifth episode of Cosmos A Personal Voyage. It first aired 26 October 1980 on PBS.

Summary
Carl Sagan describes scientific and fictional speculation about the Red Planet during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, Edgar Rice Burroughs' science-fiction books, and Percival Lowell's false vision of canals on Mars. He moves to Robert Goddard's early experiments in rocket-building, inspired by reading science fiction, and the work by Mars probes, including the Viking, searching for life on Mars, ending with the possibility of the terraforming and colonization of Mars.

Update
The Cosmos Update discusses the relevance of Mars' environment to Earth's and the possibility of a human mission to Mars.