How close are we to a real-life Mars mission like 'The Martian'?

It's no secret that NASA wants to get humans to Mars.

At the moment, the space agency's guiding star is the dream of landing people on the red planet sometime in the not-too-distant future. But Hollywood already has them beat.

In The Martian, Matt Damon plays astronaut Mark Watney, a NASA botanist who gets left behind on Mars after a dust storm forces the rest of his crew to leave the planet.

In the film, Watney and his five crewmates were brought to Mars by a huge rotating spaceship called the Hermes, which was built in low-Earth orbit using a space station backed by the real-life private company SpaceX.

So, just how different will NASA's real mission to Mars be?

Ares III and spaceflight reality

Watney's Ares III mission takes place from 2035 to 2036, according to promotional materials for The Martian — marking the third time that humans have set foot on Mars in that fictional mission series.

This timeframe is probably a bit ambitious for NASA. Instead of launching three missions to the red planet by the mid-2030s, it might be more realistic to expect that by then, the agency will be on its first flybys of the fourth rock from the sun.

Mashable.com