"Rocket Summer" by Ray Bradbury (1950)

"Rocket Summer" is a vignette written by Ray Bradbury and comprises the first chapter of his The Martian Chronicles (1950), where it carries the title "January 1999: Rocket Summer".

Surprisingly, the vignette appears on Bradbury's website, where it carries the title "January 2030: Rocket Summer".

A completely different Bradbury piece with the same title, an eight-page short story titled "Rocket Summer," appeared in the Vol. 3, No. 6, Spring 1947, issue of Planet Stories magazine. This story does not involve Mars, but rather a rocket flight to the Moon.

The vignette "Rocket Summer" and The Martian Chronicles are currently hurtling towards the Red Planet as part of the "Visions of Mars" library aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. Touchdown is scheduled for May 25, 2008.