In Ridley Scott's "The Martian," the crew of the Ares III head to Mars for an expedition. Just as their ascent vehicle lands, ...

It was a gut punch. The New York Times declared Mars a dead planet. “The fanciful Martian megafauna,” John Updike wrote many years later for this magazine, “were swept into oblivion.” ...

The surface of the Red Planet is constantly exposed to cosmic rays, and the Martian soil is so reactive that it's hostile to any organic compounds. Gypsum from Algeria stood in for Martian sulfate ...