{"id":19594,"date":"2015-10-06T00:07:34","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T16:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/mars-orbiter-shows-why-the-martian-movie-trek-would-be-even-riskier\/"},"modified":"2015-10-06T00:07:34","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T16:07:34","slug":"mars-orbiter-shows-why-the-martian-movie-trek-would-be-even-riskier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/mars-orbiter-shows-why-the-martian-movie-trek-would-be-even-riskier\/","title":{"rendered":"Mars orbiter shows why \u2018The Martian\u2019 movie trek would be even riskier"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Acidalia
A picture from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA\u2019s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the area of Acidalia Planitia where the fictional Ares 3 mission landed in \u201cThe Martian.\u201d (Credit: NASA \/ JPL \/ Univ. of Arizona)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marooned astronaut Mark Watney takes a harrowing trek from Mars\u2019 Acidalia Planitia to Schiaparelli Crater in \u201cThe Martian,\u201d which took the top spot on last weekend\u2019s box-office list with $55 million. But pictures of the actual terrain from NASA\u2019s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest Watney\u2019s trip would be even riskier in real life.<\/p>\n

The science team behind the orbiter\u2019s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, captured a series of images that correspond to scenes in the movie in response to requests from Andy Weir, who wrote the book on which \u201cThe Martian\u201d is based.<\/p>\n

\"pluto\"
\nScience journalist Alan Boyle<\/strong> is the author of “The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made A Big Difference.”<\/p>\n

The most recent photos in the series were released on Sept. 30, just before the movie came out.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of Acidalia Planitia is covered by dense fields of boulders up to several meters high that would be difficult to drive around,\u201d the University of Arizona\u2019s Alfred McEwen, who serves as HiRISE\u2019s principal investigator, writes in one of the image advisories. \u201cThere are also fissures associated with giant polygons, with steep rocky slopes that would be impassable. There are elongated fields of dense secondary craters where the surface is extremely rough at scales near the size of the rover.\u201d<\/p>\n

The terrain around the trek\u2019s end point, in Schiaparelli Crater, is covered by about a meter\u2019s worth of fine reddish dust, McEwen says. \u201cExploring this site would be like trying to do field work when there is several feet of snow on the ground,\u201d he writes. \u201cThen again, maybe the dust is cemented so it is easier to drive or walk on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mfz6rp8McDk<\/p>\n

NASA tries to avoid putting landers or rovers in such dust-covered regions, in part because the surface gets so hot during the Martian day and so cold at night. In real life, Watney would have had a hard time sleeping beneath his rover as shown in the movie.<\/p>\n

Just chalk all this up as one more difference between \u201cMartian\u201d fact and fiction \u2013 alongside the Red Planet\u2019s gentler winds and weaker gravity \u2013 and don\u2019t let it stop you from enjoying one of the best space movies of all time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A picture from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA\u2019s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the area of Acidalia Planitia where the fictional Ares 3 mission landed in \u201cThe Martian.\u201d (Credit: NASA \/ JPL \/ Univ. of Arizona) Marooned astronaut Mark Watney takes a harrowing trek from Mars\u2019 Acidalia Planitia to Schiaparelli Crater in \u201cThe Martian,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[367,4550,190,3963],"class_list":["post-19594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-mars","tag-movies","tag-nasa","tag-the-martian"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}