The Art of Pat Rawlings

Pat Rawlings is a very well known "space artist". He has painted many scenes of human exploration on the moon, Mars, and deep space. He combines computer graphics with air brush and paint to create stunning works of art. He has been doing NASA art for 17 years. His works are often seen in a huge number of publications, but are most often only credited "courtesy of NASA". Pat was the Mars Pathfinder exhibit designer at Johnson Space Center in Houston. John Connolly who I interviewed is one of the many people to have bought Pats artwork. He say he enjoys doing his artwork because it allows him to fantasize about space travel. Below is a collection of artwork that Pat gave to us to use on these pages. You can click on images for a much larger version. Thanks Pat, we appreciate it.

Lets Take a Journey to Mars (left).

Here's the blast off (right).

Early concepts for Mars exploration relied on establishing a base on the moon first (left and right).

A father telling his son about earth (left).

A blast off simulation for the trip to Mars (right).

Here you can see the stages of an unmanned mission to Mars.

The Mars Pathfinder landing (left).

A lander slowly descends to the surface (right).

A group of landers approach the Martian atmosphere (left).

Our orbiter is surveying the surface for a landing spot (right).

Once on the surface we see the the stunning view of Valles Marineris (left)

We left a crew mining Phobos (right).

Our first sample return mission (left).

Martian rock sample return vessel now heading to Earth (right).

Our first EVA on Mars (left).

Man returns to Viking (right). We wonder if it still works.

On the left, the mission scientist is in Valles Marineris taking rock samples (the women in the foreground is Pat's wife).

On the right you can see of the crew hanging over the edge of Olympus Mons.

On the left, our samples are on they way back to Earth.

On the right, a walk on Phobos.

Fun in the snow at the north polar ice cap (left).

A view of the summit of Ascaraeus Mons on the Tharsis Bulge (right).

A transport vehicle leaving Mars, going back to Earth with an exchange of crew members for the ground crew.

Another transport vehicle preparing for descent onto the surface (right).

Pat has his own web page at the Houston museum of natural science.