Mark Watney

Mark Watney is an astronaut and botanist and a member of the Ares 3 crew who traveled through space to Mars for a brief stay during which they would conduct experiments and research. Ares 1 and 2 before them went off without a hitch. The same level of success was expected for Ares 3. But things went awry. After the astronauts touched down in their MDV, they erected their living quarters known as the Hab. The unassembled housing unit was delivered in a presupply dump prior to their arrival.

A vicious sandstorm blew up making visibility nearly impossible. Since some of these Martian sandstorms can last months, NASA decided to scrub the mission and ordered the crew members to board the MAV for their rendezvous with the orbiting Hermes which was the long-distance spacecraft that would take them home.

As the astronauts grabbed essentials and stumbled toward the MAV they could...