Irish National Opera returns to Galway International Arts Festival with a darkly comic new opera MARS. Four astronauts and a sentient AI software interface are sealed into a spacecraft for nine months on a one-way mission to Mars. As they drift through the void, they binge-watch Real Housewives of Beverley Hills, spar over ideology, and spiral into existential unease. On arrival, they confront not just the red planet, but the creeping spectres of corporate authoritarianism, alienation, and ideological extremism.