Escenarios del descubrimiento extraterrestre: los discursos de la ciencia de la conquista en ficciones audiovisuales recientes

2002, Elon Musk founds SpaceX, a company whose mission is to send the first manned rocket to Mars. Fourteen years later, National Geographic launches Mars, a series that alternates between documentary and hard science fiction to wonder about the problems that the first earthly settlers would have to overcome in their Martian journey, at the same time, that exposes the progress of humanity to achieve this goal. Consequently - and from the perspective of the humanities (the history of science in particular) - in this article, I will analyze the narrative tensions that surround the founding scenario on which the imminent company of colonization of Mars is articulated. According to Diana Taylor and Juan Pimentel, I will break down how, through the administration of the idea of ​​fascination, science and scientists became the protagonists on the scene of the discovery and conquest of new territories. Simultaneously –and in dialogue with Face to Gaia, by Latour– I will inscribe the conflicts that the Martian conquest supposes in a genealogy that relates it to the figurations of the Antarctic travels of the first modernity and the colonization of America. From the Antarctic mirror, this text predicts the fate of the Martian illusion.