The Martian

On Sol 6 of the Ares 3 mission, a severe sandstorm forces Commander Melissa Lewis to abort the surface mission. As the crew moves from the Hab to the MAV, Mark Watney is struck by debris, impaled, and lost in the storm. His telemetry briefly shows no vital signs, and with the MAV tilting dangerously in the wind, Lewis makes the agonizing decision to launch. Watney later awakens, alive because his blood and the antenna debris partially sealed his suit breach. He returns to the Hab, treats his wound, and realizes the MAV is gone, communications are destroyed, and everyone believes he is dead.

Watney begins by inventorying the Hab and identifying the systems that must not fail: oxygen, water, pressure, power, and food. His supplies can last only a fraction of the time needed for any known rescue window, so he turns to botany. Using Martian soil, human waste, Earth bacteria, and potatoes intended for the crew’s meals, he creates a farm inside the Hab. To expand it, he needs far more water, so he devises a dangerous method of making water by decomposing hydrazine from the descent vehicle into hydrogen and burning it with oxygen. The process nearly kills him when unburned hydrogen accumulates and explodes, but he survives, repairs the damage, and continues.

On Earth, NASA initially mourns Watney, but satellite technician Mindy Park notices changes at the Ares 3 site: cleaned solar panels, moved rovers, deployed pop-tents, and dismantled equipment. Venkat Kapoor, Teddy Sanders, and Annie Montrose confirm that Watney is alive, though they cannot contact him. NASA publicly announces his survival while delaying the news to the returning Hermes crew. Watney, meanwhile, prepares for a possible long-term trek to Ares 4’s MAV at Schiaparelli by modifying a rover for extended travel. He adds extra batteries, solar panels, and heat from the buried RTG.

Searching for a way to communicate, Watney drives to the old Pathfinder lander, retrieves it and Sojourner, and hauls the hardware back to the Hab. JPL revives Pathfinder, and Watney first communicates through written notes and camera pointing, then through an ASCII system, and finally through a software hack that enables text chat via the rover. NASA learns the details of his survival, confirms his potato farm may keep him alive for a while, and begins planning a resupply and eventual rescue. The Hermes crew is finally told that Watney is alive, bringing relief but also deepening Lewis’s guilt.

Disaster strikes when a hidden fatigue flaw in the Hab canvas around Airlock 1 tears during depressurization. The Hab explosively vents, hurling Watney away in the detached airlock. He survives by sealing an airlock leak, patching his shattered faceplate, reaching a rover, and recovering an intact suit. The Hab can be repaired, but the farm is dead from vacuum and freezing. His food timeline collapses, forcing NASA to accelerate the Iris food probe. Under brutal schedule pressure, NASA skips some inspections, but Iris fails during launch after its payload shifts and destroys the vehicle.

China then offers the Taiyang Shen booster, giving NASA one more chance. While JPL rushes a replacement probe, astrodynamicist Rich Purnell discovers a bolder plan: use Taiyang Shen to resupply Hermes near Earth, then send Hermes back to Mars for a flyby rescue. Teddy rejects the plan because it risks the five Hermes astronauts as well as Watney, but Mitch Henderson secretly transmits the maneuver to the crew. Lewis and her crew unanimously choose to execute the course change, effectively forcing NASA to support them. The Chinese launch succeeds, Martinez docks the resupply probe with Hermes, and the rescue plan becomes real.

Watney loses Pathfinder after accidentally shorting it while modifying rover equipment, leaving him alone again. Without NASA’s guidance, he completes the rover-and-trailer system needed to drive more than 3,000 kilometers to Schiaparelli. He uses RTG heat to reduce life-support power demands, adds batteries and solar capacity, builds a Hab-canvas bedroom, and sets out on Sol 449. NASA watches by satellite but cannot warn him about a dust storm along his route. Watney detects the problem himself through falling solar output, builds improvised power loggers, maps the storm’s movement, and detours south until he escapes it.

Near Schiaparelli, Watney descends toward the basin through a route he calls the Entrance Ramp, but hidden soft soil flips the rover and trailer. He survives, rights both vehicles over several sols, restores life support, and reaches the Ares 4 MAV. There, under NASA’s transmitted plan, he strips the vehicle to reduce mass: seats, controls, backup systems, life support, windows, hull panels, and other components are removed, with Hab canvas covering some openings. He also electrolyzes water and urine to add fuel. Hermes approaches Mars while Martinez trains to fly the MAV remotely and Beck prepares to retrieve Watney by EVA.

On Sol 549, the stripped MAV launches, but the improvised canvas tears, creating drag and leaving the intercept with Hermes far worse than planned. Lewis orders desperate adjustments, including using Hermes’s attitude fuel and then venting the ship’s atmosphere through a breached vehicular airlock. Vogel builds a small sugar-liquid oxygen bomb to blow the airlock, Johanssen handles the calculations and trigger, and Martinez aligns the ship. The maneuver reduces the gap enough for Beck to fly out with an MMU, reach the damaged MAV, secure Watney, and return on a tether managed by Vogel. Watney is brought aboard Hermes alive, with broken ribs but reunited with his crew. As Earth celebrates, he reflects that people across nations worked together because saving one stranded person mattered.