All of the beautiful locations in Matt Damon's new thriller about Mars are real — here are the epic photos that prove it

Soon, Oscar-winning actor Matt Damon will be stranded on Mars with no immediate way of escape or communication. 

Damon is starring as the joke-cracking, NASA-trained astronaut Mark Watney in the film "The Martian," which is scheduled to debut on October 2 and is based on the best-selling sci-fi novel by Andy Weir. 

Any normal person would never survive stranded alone on Mars for over a year, but Watney isn't normal, and he's got a plan. One of the most impressive qualities about Weir's book is how realistic it is. Every place Watney visits on Mars is real, for example. 

Take a tour through Watney's Martian wanderings using some of the mind-blowing photos taken from NASA's HiRISE camera, complete with distances and maps from recently released NASA software.

Warning: Although this post excludes specific details about how Watney tries to save himself, it does contain spoilers. If you have not read "The Martian," you can still see epically awesome photos of Mars.

 

Mark Watney is part of a six-member team that lands in a large northern basin on Mars, called Acidalia Planitia. This is where the crew establishes their home base, called "the Hab." Here's the real life Acidalia Planitia, where shallow pits may have formed from ancient floods or glaciers.

The hab is where Watney spends most of his time. Although Acidalia Planitia is relatively flat, here we can see a young crater in exquisite detail. HiRISE images have false coloring that highlights distinct Martian features like the ejected material in this crater.

Stranded on Mars, Watney had no technology to communicate with the crew in space or NASA back on Earth. But Watney's a clever guy: He realizes that NASA's Mars lander, Pathfinder, is close by in the Martian valley called Ares Vallis. So he retrieves it and uses it to talk to NASA who, he hopes, can help save him. Here's how far Acidalia Planitia is from Ares Vallis.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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