Following in the footsteps of recent space blockbusters Interstellar and Gravity, The Martian looks set to be the stand-out space thriller of 2015. The movie is set on Mars and the central plot revolves around astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) being stranded alone on the Red Planet.

It's a topical subject, with the Mars One project that intends to crowdsource participants to make the first manned trip to Mars a topic of hot debate in the media. But just how scientifically accurate is The Martian? Could it happen, and what, if any, are the real clangers that the movie drops?

Warning: spoilers ahead!

Taking the windows out of the space rocket

In this scene, Damon's character meticulously removes the windows from the rocket he will be launching in and covers them with thin canvas.

It might seem like the most implausible scene in the film but, in fact, scientists believe it could well be possible. Because the rocket is travelling at such a speed and the Martian atmosphere is thin, the atmosphere becomes irrelevant before the rocket is travelling fast enough for the atmosphere to become a threat. Pretty cool stuff!

The gravity-assist

One of the key plot points in The Martian is that the spaceship returning to Earth with Watney's colleagues is able to use something called a gravity-assist to gain momentum and return to the Red Planet.

A gravity-assist is a real concept, thought up by a junior NASA scientist in the 1960s – Michael Minovitch. Like the character in The Martian who suggests the idea, he was initially ignored, but his idea went on to become key to the Voyager missions to much more distant planets than we had ever imagined.

Making food

While it's totally plausible that one day we will be able to grow food on the surface of Mars, scientific consensus is that the method used in the film is neither the most likely nor the most efficient.

Mark Watney uses his own faeces as fertiliser – in reality, this would probably be used as fuel, not kept indefinitely – and uses a complicated chemical process to create water. As we know water is present in Martian soil, extracting it from here would seem to be the less tiresome option!

The big one

One of the few real criticisms levelled at The Martian as regards scientific accuracy is the storm which leads to Watney's fellow astronauts believing him to be dead. 

They are seen flailing around in high winds, but if a Martian wind actually reached 100 mph – a rare occurrence – it would only be equivalent to a 10 mph wind on Earth because of the much thinner atmosphere on the planet. Certainly not enough to knock a grown man flying!

All in all, The Martian is a film that scores well on the believability scale – and it's an enjoyable romp, too, that's well worth a watch.