Of course, one of the stars in the film is the Martian weather, and the winds in particular. In the movie, the winds proved destructive to the mission on Mars and continually rattled the equipment and housing modules. NASA provided some insights on this in an article titled "The Fact and Fiction of Martian Dust Storms," noting:
“Once every three Mars years (about 5 ½ Earth years), on average, normal storms grow into planet-encircling dust storms, and we usually call those ‘global dust storms’ to distinguish them,” Smith said.
It is unlikely that even these dust storms could strand an astronaut on Mars, however. Even the wind in the largest dust storms likely could not tip or rip apart major mechanical equipment. The winds in the strongest Martian storms top out at about 60 miles per hour, less than half the speed of some hurricane-force winds on Earth.Hence, the winds are not fun when trying to accomplish a task on the surface of Mars, yet they are not likely to destroy habitats or knock over a rocket. This is not to pick on the film as much as to point out that we have a lot of things to worry about related to a Martian mission and fortunately this is not one of them. That said, you should see the film and enjoy the show.
Image Credit: This close-up image of a dust storm on Mars was acquired by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on November 7, 2007, around 3 p.m. local time on Mars. The full story from NASA is here.
