The Real Science Behind Matt Damon’s Troubles in The Martian

In Ridley Scott’s new film The Martian, Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, an astronaut who is marooned on Mars after a brutal storm separates him from the rest of his crew. (This is the second film in two years that has seen Damon marooned on a hostile planet—it happened to him in 2014's Interstellar). He is presumed dead, considering the soonest his comrades could possibly return to save him is in four years,