When Andy Weir wrote The Martian, his science puzzler about an astronaut marooned on Mars with only his wits (read: scientific knowledge) to save him, he timed it to come out before the Curiosity Rover launched in 2011. So there’s no way he could have known what the world would be like in September 2015, as the release of the film adaptation is imminent. But, diving into the science behind the movie with NASA’s Dr. Jim Greene, who was a technical advisor, we discovered Mars is quite like Earth in several unexpected ways.

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