Goofs

The Ares III mission starts in early November, and Mark is rescued after 561 sols. That means that it would be May or June on Earth. Yet people in New York and Beijing watching Mark's rescue are all dressed as if it is the middle of winter, not to mention, there are snow flurries in front of the CNSA Headquarters in Beijing.

On Sol 19, when Mark Watney is walking back to the hab after the storm, the rover is shown about 100 feet from the hab partially obscured by a small hill. It is a major plot point that it was parked right next to the hab on Sol 18 and not moved again.

During the "Elrond Council", when Purnell puts back the pen in Teddy Sanders's jacket pocket, he gives back his own common plastic pen instead of Sanders' Montblanc. Right after, in the following shot, the Montblanc reappears again in Sanders' pocket.

When the first satellite images of the Ares 4 site are viewed, Mindy, Teddy and Vincent see only that the solar panels have been cleaned and the rover moved. They should have also been able to see all the equipment that Mark had removed from the Hab to begin growing the potatoes.

The launch of the IRIS probe shows an Atlas rocket with a payload faring that is wider than the all-white rocket body (the footage is the launch of Mars Science Laboratory, the "Curiosity" rover). But the breakup is a Delta rocket with a dark rocket body and flush payload faring (footage is from the Delta 178 GOES-G launch failure in 1986).

The film shows Watney following a parachute and shrouds to find the buried Pathfinder lander, but the Pathfinder used a unique airbag system that involved cutting the lander loose from the parachute and Rocket Assisted Deceleration System above the surface. The lander then bounced at least 15 times inside the airbag cocoon before coming to a rest, while the remaining rocket thrust carried the backshell and parachute away from the landing site.

Due to Mars' low atmospheric pressure, the effective wind pressure in martian wind storms is much lower than shown in the movie, very unlikely to be sufficient to tip a spacecraft. Also, the wind on Mars is much too weak to carry large rocks. In interviews, Andy Weir has acknowledged this and admitted that he took creative license with this in order to create the story.

The dust on Mars at the surface tends to be very fine, with grain sizes comparable to smoke particles. There are dust storms on Mars, but they look and behave like puffs of smoke instead of raging wind storms depicted in the movie.

While the movie portrays the Martian sunset as similar to the Earthen sunset, in reality the Martian sunset has a smaller, less bright sun and sets in shades of blue and pink.

When Mark ascends from Mars, the camera focuses on his face, with nuts and bolts floating around him. However, those nuts and bolts can be seen floating around before the spacecraft finishes its burn, which would not be possible when it is still accelerating.

At various points in the movie, the "head up display" of Watneys space suit is shown, giving environmental and suit data on the atmospheric pressure and oxygen content.

There are two major problems with this:

The suit value is around 4.7 PSI and 21% oxygen. That gives a "Partial Pressure" for oxygen of only around one PSI, which is not sufficient to support life - the minimum for survival is around 2 PSI, with nearer 3 PSI to allow normal levels of exertion.

4.7 PSI is a standard for NASA, but at that pressure almost pure oxygen is used.

By comparison, the HAB pressure are shown as around 12.5 - 14 PSI with 21% oxygen, giving around 2.5 - 3 PSI oxygen, roughly "earth atmosphere" range.

This gives the second problem - dropping from 12.5 or 14 PSI to 4.7 PSI pressure requires a progressive decompression sequence each time, which takes over two hours by the NASA protocol. The astronaut must pre-breathe pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from the body for this time, plus a period of "vigorous exercise" at the start of each pre-breathing and decompression sequence.

Without this, the astronaut will get "the bends" due to nitrogen in the body tissues forming bubbles.

Watney claims that nothing sent on the mission will burn, which is why he has to destroy the crucifix which Martinez had in his personal items. Yet Watney is often shown writing on paper in the Hab and paper, obviously, burns. NASA has developed a form of paper processed from stone specifically so it cannot burn. They sell it to the public at NASA gift shops and museums.

After the airlock was blown away, Watney repairs the breach with a plastic sheet and duct tape. The hole was large enough for an astronaut to walk through in length, suggesting the hole was at least 2 meters in diameter. With an atmospheric pressure of 1 Bar (100 kPa), it would equate to approximately 3.2 tons of pressure onto the seal(if the outside atmosphere is neglected, since it is less than 0.01 Bar). Such a repair would have broken as soon as he tried to pressurize.

Also, this repair is seen fluttering in the wind. Provided the seal would hold the entire 31.4 tons of pressure inside, it wouldn't flutter with that large inequality in pressure, no matter how strong the outside wind is.

The first time Mark uses the rover to chat with NASA, it is nighttime on Mars. That means that he is on the side of Mars that is facing away from the Sun. Since Mars is in an outer orbit compared to Earth, the dark side of Mars is always facing away from Earth, whether both planets are on opposite ends of the Sun or on the same end. Pathfinder requires direct line of sight in order to broadcast its signal to Earth. Therefore, it should be day on Mars in order to enable communication with Earth through Pathfinder.

The failed NASA resupply ship was said to contain "protein cubes" which became liquefied under the effect of the rockets acceleration, but no known protein solid undergoes a phase transition to liquid due to gravity or vibration. The followup query of "why didn't that reveal itself during inspection?" is ludicrous as inspection does not precisely simulate launch conditions, it merely confirms current launch worthiness. Why suddenly liquid protein cubes would cause an imbalance is also a mystery unless they were bulk packed and able to coalesce into a large fluid mass moving substantially within the rocket. (This is exactly what happens in the novel, as the protein can compress while the vegetable oil does not.)

Air escaping a hole in a glove would push with about the same force as a person generates blowing out a candle. It wouldn't cause violent changes in velocity and would be easily controlled. It would probably be sufficient to push Mark towards the ship, slowly, and he wouldn't want to close the distance all that fast anyway.

In the microgravity section of the Hermes, astronauts exhibited non-ballistic motion while making right turns from one tunnel to another. They shouldn't be able to just turn their bodies in midair.

The Hermes has a rotating midsection, where centrifugal force generates "artificial gravity" inside. However, while in deep space, a brief shot shows Vogel walking in the background. His body axis is pointing straight upwards, indicating external gravity, when it should be pointing towards the rotation axis of the midsection as seen in other shots, making his body appear to be "tilting". One can even notice he is walking downhill by the small, stomping steps he takes. Such goof is visible in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), too, aboard the Space Wheel.

The air lock blowout is shown as a blow-in, since the rupture is shown from the inside according to the curve of the black structural ribs, and the Martian atmosphere and condensation is blown inwards. The pressure inside the Hab would always be much greater than the pressure outside, so the rupture would have blown outwards. It would also be much more likely to happen within the airlock, in the area between the two doors, where the strain on the walls (which look flexible, but are never shown to flex as the pressure changes) changes with each pressurization or depressurization, than on the Hab side of the inner door where the pressures would be constant, but there's an outside chance that it could have been coincidence, bad luck, and/or the airlock jiggling as it cycled.

When the video file from Mitch Henderson arrives and everyone is gathering around the monitor, Vogel walks towards it as if walking down an incline. At any point in the Hermes gravity wheel, everyone would walk like they are on a level surface.

All the tires shown on Mars are heavy vulcanized-rubber pneumatic load-carrying Earth tires; not lightweight compactible leak-proof low-gravity tires, like the lunar rovers'.

Being the year is set in 2035 - 2037, there is a Samsung television which would be at least 20 years old.

This story apparently takes place at a time in the future. However, in the JPL scenes, some modern tech was left out - all of the computer monitors visible to the audience are CRT type, which is outdated, even today (2026). The monitors should have been "flat-screen" or maybe even holographic.

When Mark first communicates with NASA via the camera, he asks "Are you receiving me, Yes, No." There is no point in the "No" sign as since if they weren't receiving him, they wouldn't be able to send any response.

Quindar tones (those iconic beeps before and after an astronaut speaks) can be occasionally heard when the crew is communicating with each other and NASA. Quindar tones have not been used since the early 1980s.

A running theme of the movie is how Mark hates the commander's disco, but once he reestablished contact with earth and got data dumps, there's no reason they could not have sent him some "better" music.

When Vogel is catching water droplets in the Hermes to amuse his kids, the belt suspending him to give the effect of weightlessness is visible under his clothes.

When Watney first wakes up alone on Mars, just as he cuts himself free of the antenna cable, a reflection of someone in a spacesuit can be seen in his visor.

When Watney gets up from his bed on Sol 21, the shot cuts to a CCTV camera. A tape marker, which allows actors to "hit their mark", is visible on the floor.

In the beginning of the movie after the major storm, you see Matt Damon's character still alive in the sand. When he stands up and realizes he's injured, you can clearly see the camera man reflecting in Matt Damon's helmet. You can then see his reflection moving off to the side off the helmet while holding the camera to get the shot.

The coordinates given for The Hab, 31.2°N 28.5°W, are in Chryse Planitia, which is a region just south of the stated location of Acidalia Planitia.

When Mindy Park receives the Email from Vincent Kapoor (at 1:30 AM) she's asked to check the coordinates at 46.7°N 22°W and zooms right into the Hab, but later in the Cafeteria, when plotting Marks course on the framed picture, when asked the Hab location she points at the image and states 31.2°N 28.5°W.

The "Chinese space center" is actually the Palace of Arts (Muvészetek Palotája) in Budapest, Hungary. The building is easily recognized, especially because the bridge behind it (Rákóczi Bridge). In the office shots, the river Danube is visible through the windows, with the Budapest Technical University on the other bank. These are all very well recognizable landmarks of the Hungarian capital, although tourists usually don't visit them. For a Hungarian viewer this pretty much breaks the atmosphere of the movie.

Pictures of Mark's Martian terrain show craters, but there are no craters seen during ground-level shots.

In the establishing shot of the Johnson Space Center, there are large hangars like those used to house the space shuttle. However there are no launch pads in the Johnson Space Center, so such hangars do not exist at the Johnson Space Center.

In the MAV takeoff scene in the beginning of the movie, the MAV appears to be very vulnerable to strong storms present on Mars and easily tipped over. It seems unlikely that the 2nd MAV could be placed on Mars for long periods of time and be expected to stay upright until the next mission arrived.

The Hydrazine fuel that Watney uses to create water by dripping it over a catalyst is extremely toxic. Unsymmetrical DiMethyl Hydrazine (UDMH) and MonoMethyl Hydrazine (MMH) singularly or a mixture of the two, (Aerozine 50) are common propellants desirable because of their stability in long term storage and that when used with an oxidizer like Nitrogen Tetroxide no external ignition source is required. The exposure limit for hydrazine propellant is in the range of 0.05-0.1ppm (parts per million). The drip setup in the HAB kitchen/potato farm would have exposed Watney to a significant, most likely lethal amount of hydrazine especially after the explosion.

Deadly radiation, whether from the Sun or from cosmic background sources, is one of the main problems confronting human travelers from Earth to Mars, yet this is never mentioned or dealt with in the film or the book. People on the International Space Station are near enough Earth to be protected by this planet's magnetosphere, but people and potato plants on the surface of Mars would not have any such protection, since Mars lost its magnetic field long ago.

After the airlock module is blows up, Watney seals it with a plastic sheet and duct tape. Whilst this worked to ensure the habitat was air tight, it would not offer any form of heat insulation. The temperature outside the habitat at times would be sub-zero (as demonstrated by the potato crop being flash frozen). This would cause the temperature inside to make the habitat uninhabitable. Despite this, Watley is able to live walk around semi-naked.

The Hab's (apparently) only communication antenna that can contact Earth is torn away and likely destroyed in the storm, and anything on the MAV is gone, so Mark is left without any means of communication, until he gets the lander. The MDV is stated to have at least 3 communication devices that can contact the ship in orbit, so it would also be able to contact the satellites in orbit, which contact Earth. The MDV is sure to be able to contact Earth directly, as well as both the working and broken rovers, and the Hab would have had more than one system. Out of all of those other things that would certainly have been able to "phone home".

When the crew saved Mark on Sol 561, they say, "There's a little smell going on over there, bud." Mark answers, "I haven't had a shower in a year and a half". But on Sol 461, the last day in the HAB, Mark walked out naked except for a bath towel on his body. Drops are seen on the glass door of the shower, as well as water running down his back.

On a video call when Commander Lewis' husband shows her the Abba album he bought in a market he states it is a first pressing. The cover shows Fernando at the top of the tracklist but the first pressing only had Fernando as a bonus track and it wasn't listed on the cover. What he is showing is the second pressing.

At about 55 minutes, when Kapoor tells Watney that the crew doesn't know he's alive, there is no way the crew wouldn't know by then. The population of the Earth know about it and several of them communicate with the crew privately. If NASA tried to prevent it, they would have received very negative press from the families back home for suppressing it.

When Vincent Kapoor and Mindy Park track Mark in the Rover and Vincent realises he may be headed to find Pathfinder on Acidalia Planitia, Vincent says "I need a map" and they proceed to unnecessarily run upstairs and draw on a picture off the canteen wall with a marker pen, when surely they could have just worked that out from the screen in front of them.

Mark Watney says that if exposed to space without a pressurized suit he would implode, but in fact he would explode.