The Martian Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
48 free The Martian trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free The Martian trivia questions with answers. The Martian began as a serial on Andy Weir's blog, became a 99-cent Kindle bestseller and ended up as a Ridley Scott blockbuster with seven Oscar nominations. This The Martian trivia quiz covers both the book and the 2015 film: how Mark Watney gets stranded, how he grows potatoes and makes water, how NASA works out he is alive, the Pathfinder probe, the Hermes crew's mutiny and the Rich Purnell manoeuvre, and the improvised rescue at the end. It also covers the making of the film: the Budapest sound stages and Wadi Rum exteriors, the cast from Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain to Donald Glover, the disco soundtrack, the box office, the Golden Globe 'comedy' win, and how accurate the science really is. It suits a sci-fi movie night, a book club or a space-themed quiz. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia and cited on the question, so you can see where each fact comes from.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote the novel The Martian?
Andy Weir
Andy Weir's debut was The Martian; he followed it with Artemis and Project Hail Mary.
Q 02How was The Martian first published?
As a serial on his blog
Crown bought the print rights in 2013 for over $100,000 and published it in February 2014.
Q 03For how much did Weir first sell the Kindle edition of The Martian at fans' request?
99 cents
Weir put the Kindle edition up for 99 cents, the Amazon minimum, at fans' request; it sold 35,000 copies in three months and topped Amazon's science-fiction chart.
Q 04What is Mark Watney's scientific speciality?
Botany
Watney's speciality is botany, which is how he knows to farm Martian soil fertilised with the crew's waste; in the novel he doubles as the mission's mechanical engineer.
Q 05What is the name of the Mars mission Mark Watney is on when he is stranded in The Martian?
Ares III
Ares III is the third crewed Mars mission in the book, landing on the plain of Acidalia Planitia for a planned 31-sol surface stay.
Q 06What is the name of the ship that carries the crew between Earth and Mars?
Hermes
Hermes is the ion-drive ship that ferries Ares crews between Earth and Mars; the crew vote unanimously to turn it around and go back for Watney.
Q 07What forces the crew to abandon Watney, believing him dead?
A dust storm
A dust storm's flying debris strikes Watney during the evacuation; NASA scientists later noted a real Martian storm would have almost no force in the thin air.
Q 08In the novel, what impales Watney during the evacuation?
An antenna
An antenna torn loose by the wind impales Watney and smashes his suit's bio-monitor, so the crew see him flatline and leave him for dead.
Q 09How many sols into the mission does the storm hit in the novel?
Six
The storm hits six sols in, on Sol 6 of a planned 31-sol surface stay, which is why Watney's first log entry is headed 'Sol 6'.
Q 10What crop does Watney farm inside the Hab?
Potatoes
Watney farms potatoes from the crew's Thanksgiving supply in Martian soil fertilised with the crew's waste; for the film, real potatoes were grown on a neighbouring sound stage.
Q 11Watney makes water for his crops from what?
Leftover rocket fuel
He uses leftover rocket fuel, the hydrazine from the descent vehicle, passing it over an iridium catalyst to free hydrogen, which he burns with oxygen to make water.
Q 12Which old NASA probe does Watney dig up to restore contact with Earth?
Pathfinder
The real Pathfinder landed on 4 July 1997 carrying the rover Sojourner.
Q 13Which NASA satellite planner is the first to notice Watney is alive?
Mindy Park
Mindy Park, a SatCon satellite-imagery analyst, notices the Hab's solar panels have been cleaned and the rover moved; Weir said he pictured her as Korean, though that never made it into the book.
Q 21Who plays Mark Watney?
Matt Damon
Matt Damon plays Watney; the year before he had played Dr Mann, another stranded astronaut, in Interstellar (2014).
Q 22Who directed The Martian?
Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott directed The Martian, which out-grossed Gladiator to become the highest-grossing film of his career.
Q 23Which screenwriter adapted the novel and later also adapted Project Hail Mary?
Drew Goddard
Drew Goddard wrote the adaptation, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and later scripted the Project Hail Mary film for directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
Q 14Which NASA official decides not to tell the Ares III crew that Watney is alive?
Teddy Sanders
NASA Administrator Teddy Sanders withholds the news so the Hermes crew stay focused on the long flight home, overruling flight director Mitch Henderson.
Q 15What destroys Watney's potato garden?
An airlock explosion
An airlock explosion: Airlock 1's fatigued canvas seal blows out, decompressing the Hab and freezing the potato crop; later he shorts out Pathfinder too by running a drill's current through it.
Q 16Which space agency provides the booster that makes the rescue possible?
China's
China's space agency gives NASA its Taiyang Shen booster, a rocket built to launch a solar probe, after the Iris resupply probe is lost on launch.
Q 17Which astrophysicist devises the slingshot plan that sends the crew's ship back to Mars?
Rich Purnell
Rich Purnell, a NASA astrodynamicist, works out that Hermes can swing past Earth for a gravity assist and return to Mars, the plan the crew dub the Rich Purnell Maneuver.
Q 18How does the crew learn of the Purnell plan after Sanders rejects it?
Henderson secretly sends it to them
Henderson secretly sends it to them by email from NASA; Sanders backs the crew publicly once they commit but demands Henderson's resignation afterwards.
Q 19In the film's climax, how does Watney propel himself across the gap to Lewis?
By piercing his suit to vent air
By piercing his suit to vent air through a punctured glove, Watney jets toward Lewis in the film; in the novel it is Beck who goes out on the tether to grab him.
Q 20What job does Watney take after returning to Earth?
Astronaut survival instructor
In the film's coda Watney is an astronaut survival instructor, telling candidates that in space you solve one problem at a time; the final scene is the Ares V launch.
Q 24Jessica Chastain plays which member of the Ares III crew?
The mission commander
Jessica Chastain plays Melissa Lewis, the mission commander and the crew's geologist; she prepared by meeting astronauts and scientists at JPL and the Johnson Space Center.
Q 25Which Community and Atlanta star plays the JPL astrodynamicist behind the slingshot rescue plan in The Martian?
Donald Glover
Donald Glover's astrodynamicist was one of three film roles for him in 2015, alongside Magic Mike XXL.
Q 26Which actor plays the NASA administrator who keeps Watney's survival from the crew?
Jeff Daniels
Jeff Daniels plays Administrator Teddy Sanders; he had earlier co-starred with Christopher Lloyd in the 1999 comedy My Favorite Martian.
Q 27Chiwetel Ejiofor's casting as Vincent Kapoor drew criticism because the novel's character is named what?
Venkat
In the novel he is Venkat Kapoor, implicitly Indian-American; the film renamed him Vincent, and Weir defended the casting by saying his book deliberately avoided physical descriptions.
Q 28Where were the film's interior sets built?
Budapest, Hungary
The interiors were built at Korda Studios outside Budapest, Hungary, in the wine village of Etyek about 30 km west of the capital.
Q 29Which desert in Jordan stood in for the surface of Mars?
Wadi Rum
Wadi Rum, the 'Valley of the Moon' in southern Jordan, stood in for Mars as it had in Red Planet (2000) and The Last Days on Mars (2013), and later did for Arrakis in Dune.
Q 30What did the production give to Jordan as thanks for its hospitality?
The Mars rover model
The production donated the Mars rover model it built for filming to Jordan, and it went on display at the Royal Automobile Museum in Amman.