Approaching Firestar
Brianna Blanchard
Major: Environmental Public Health
Genre/Medium: Colored pencil on paper
About the Work:
Approaching Firestar is a colored pencil drawing on an 11 x 17 piece of paper inspired by the Psyche spacecraft’s upcoming May 2026 Mars flyby, as well as the Chinese name for Mars, Huǒxīng (火星), which translates to “Firestar”. As a Chinese American artist myself, I was very drawn to the translated name. It made me think about how people have viewed celestial bodies across time through different cultural perspectives, whether with ancient naming traditions or modern scientific exploration.
The composition shows a retrofuturistic looking landscape, where a winding road leads towards a distant modern city beneath Mars dominating the sky. A red vintage car inspired by a 1960s GM Pontiac Firebird, built to showcase space-age design, travels along the road and mirrors the trajectory of the Psyche spacecraft passing above. Rather than focusing on arrival, the piece centers on the moment of approach as an in-between space of both anticipation and forward movement, similar to what will occur with the 2026 Mars flyby (the flyby essentially being a gravity assist maneuver), where the spacecraft will pass close to Mars and use its gravitational pull to redirect and accelerate toward the asteroid Psyche. Read more…
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