So in order to gain contact with NASA, Watney digs up the Mars Pathfinder, the probe which NASA lost contact with in 1997. He fixes it (woo!) and the probe is able to communicate with Earth. Through a camera on the Pathfinder, Watney is able to speak to NASA through messages he writes and shows to it.

Science, Human Ingenuity, and the Fight to Survive In the closing pages of The Martian, Watney declares that, to the public, his story of survival represents “progress, science, and the interplanetary future.” This is true: The Martian is indeed a story of scientific progress on a grand scale.

When astronauts blast off from the planet Mars, they leave behind Mark Watney (Matt Damon), presumed dead after a fierce storm. With only a meager amount of supplies, the stranded visitor must utilize his wits and spirit to find a way to survive on the hostile planet. Meanwhile, back on Earth, members of NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring him home, while his crew mates hatch their own plan for a daring rescue mission.

There is the plausible science (using rocket fuel as a source for water) and the downright impossible fiction (Mars sandstorms are not strong enough to cause damage. They’re more like gentle breezes.). So while the overall Martian scenario may be fictional, the science in COLL 150 is very real.

What are the two mobile pressure vessels? The mobile pressure vessels are the rover and the trailer. The two vessels aren’t completely independent; they’re connected by a hose.

The stripped down

Mark Watney

In the first equation above, g is referred to as the acceleration of gravity. Its value is 9.8 m/s2 on Earth. That is to say, the acceleration of gravity on the surface of the earth at sea level is 9.8 m/s2….Calculating g on Other Planets.

The hab, short for Mars Lander Habitat is the closest that Mark has to a home on Mars.

A good chunk of The Martian takes place in Watney’s habitat, affectionately known as the Hab. The Hab is based on Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA), a self-contained habitat that NASA crews train in for long-duration deep space missions. HERA is a self-contained environment that simulates a deep-space habit.

31 Martian Days

In the movie The Martian, Mark Watney, finding himself stranded 140 million miles from earth (and 4 years from rescue), sums up his situation like this: “If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst.

Who is Mark Watney? Mark Watney is a botanist, mechanical engineer, astronaut. He keeps a running video log of his efforts to make the inhospitable Martian surface more liveable.

In “The Martian,” Watney grows his own food by planting potato eyes in the ground. He fertilizes the plants with human waste and creates liquid water out of rocket fuel.

Oxygen Generation On Mars, Watney can’t just step outside for a breath of fresh air To survive, he has to carry his own supply of oxygen everywhere he goes. In his Hab he uses the “oxygenator,” a system that generates oxygen using the carbon dioxide from the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) fuel generator.

Get growing. Alone on Mars, Watney is not being arrogant when he calls himself the greatest botanist on the planet.

So to get biological material into Martian soil, Watney uses the only spare biological material he has: astronaut poop. He mixes it in with the Martian soil, plants some potatoes that NASA had sent up with his crew, and, voila, you have plant life on Mars. Yes, it is possible to grow plants on Mars – kind of.

For that, he uses some chemistry: He combines a precise ratio of hydrogen, drawn from rocket fuel, and oxygen to create the necessary water. While the calculation works just as planned, Watney makes an explosive mistake. In the movie, he fails to take into account the oxygen in the gas he’s breathing out.

Watney takes the risk of creating his own water by using his oxygenator (a device that creates oxygen from carbon dioxide), extracting hydrogen from the crew’s unused hydrazine fuel (from the MDV, or Mars Descent Vehicle), and burning them to create the extra water he needs to nourish his potatoes.

Mark says in the book that “it takes the MAV eighteen months to make the fuel it needs, so NASA sends it four years early in case the necessary conversions take longer than expected.” He then goes on to add, “Sending it early also allows NASA to have a pilot in orbit to land it remotely, rather than controlling it from …

Problem 1: As the Ares 3 crew is evacuating Mars, Mark Watney is impaled by a communication antenna. He carefully removes the antenna and limps to the Hab. There, he anesthetizes and stitches up his wound, ultimately saving his life.

Because they didn’t adequately test the load, the didn’t realize that the rations would liquefy under the forces involved in takeoff. When it failed, it increased the force on the other bolts, causing them to fail, one after another, until the whole rocket was torn apart.

They head back into the vessel without Watney and fly back into space. Back on Earth, Director of NASA Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) holds a press conference to state that while the Hermes crew succeeded in their mission, Watney was lost, and he is declared dead.

In The Martian by Andy Weir, how did observation and deduction help Mark Watney figure out he had entered a dust storm? Observation and deduction helped Mark Watney figure out he had entered the dust storm because he was able to observe how his power charge rates were changing.

Watney is turning his water supply into hydrogen to help fuel the MAV. NASA has him disconnect the hoses between the rover and trailer. Watney makes hydrogen in the trailer, and, after stopping the atmospheric regulator’s safety mechanisms, uses the regulator to pull all of the oxygen out of the trailer.

After collecting the solar cells and checking the recordings, Watney determines the storm is north of him. Since it’s moving west, he can avoid the storm by traveling south, then east. Schiaparelli is to the southeast, so Watney won’t have to go too far out of his way.

One of Watney’s biggest survival challenges is how he’ll stay warm during the sub-zero Martian nights. His solution is to use a radioisotope thermal generator, or RTG, as a portable heat source.

The Rich Purnell Maneuver was a trajectory course for the Hermes proposed and calculated by astrodynamicist Rich Purnell. Using the Earth’s gravity as a slingshot, it sent the Hermes back to Mars to save Mark Watney before returning home to Earth once more.

Scientists have made only a few direct measurements of Martian wind speeds. The Curiosity rover is making such measurements on Mars now. But studies of dust storms, cloud movements, and wind streaks suggest that winds can blow up to 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph).

Neither Andy Weir’s bestselling novel The Martian nor its new, Matt Damon-starring, Ridley Scott-directed film adaptation tell us when the story is set. The novel opens on “Sol 6,” the sixth day the crew of Ares 3—NASA’s third manned Mars expedition—spend on the Red Planet’s surface. The movie stars on Sol 18.