Recently published photographs taken with the NASA spacecraft depict landscapes of the Red Planet, where the plot of the sci-fi film The Martian develops.
NASA's multifunctional automatic interplanetary station, designed for Mars exploration, photographed the Atidalia Plain and the southwestern portion of the Schiaparelli crater, which is 460 km wide. These sites in the Martian were landing sites for the Ares-3 and Ares-4 missions, respectively.
The Martian, which premiered in the United States on Friday, October 2, tells the story of NASA astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon), who during a powerful dust storm on the Red Planet takes damage to a spacesuit. To survive on Mars and connect with a mission that considers it dead, Watney has to use her engineering know-how.
The crew of the "Ares-3" consists of Watney and five other astronauts. They land on the Atcidalian Plain, which extends into the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere of Mars.
In the description for the fresh photos on Monday, October 5, NASA stated: "The Atcidalian Plain, where the main character of the painting lands, Watney, is not far from the place where Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover landed in 1997.
A picture of the Schiaparelli crater, which is located near the equator of Mars, according to NASA employees, depicts a landscape covered with about a meter of dust. In the Martian, the Ares-4 mission plans to land there, but in real life, NASA is trying to avoid areas with a lot of dust, since there are often significant temperature differences, and their geological potential is rather difficult to predict.
The recently published images of the Atcidalian Plain and the Schiaparelli crater were taken by a camera located onboard the multifunctional automatic interplanetary station on May 17, 2015 and July 14, 2015, respectively.
