(I know, intellectually, that I'll not, but on some level every time I see something like this I hope I'll suddenly see thoats and flyers and red and green people, or at least a wooden landship under sail, with a snarling-beast figurehead and wheels spun of crystalline wire.)

I think it's awesome that it's actual Mars. We know what the fantasies look like. The real thing is (flat, red, it doesn't matter: it's not a controlled environment) unpredictable.

(That said, you could totally write about a rover reaching fantastic Mars.)