The actual landing ground of the astronauts in the movie and novel “The Martian” has been revealed by NASA through real images of the sites on present-day Mars. The images show the actual locations used for the landing sites on Mars for the fictional "Ares 3" and "Ares 4" missions of NASA in the movie.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, captured the images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that flies above the planet. The images were part of the weekly release of the device to study the Red Planet.

NASA confirmed that the sites for the fictional mission Ares 3 are actually located on a real plain on Mars, known as Acidalia Planitia, and the Ares 4 site can be found inside a crater called Schiaparelli. The film was produced by 20th Century Fox Entertainment in collaboration with NASA, which guided the production design.

Technical consultants of the movie also include NASA’s director of planetary science, Jim Green, and Dave Lavery, the programme executive for solar system exploration. NASA said that many technologies used in the film have already been developed today for the preparation for future space exploration and missions.

The images from the HiRISE are not just to show the fact-based locations of the movie; the observations will also be used to consider landing areas for real human missions in space in the future, NASA reported. The HiRISE has already provided significant information that was used to select landing sites for the missions of the Curiosity Mars rover of NASA.

More than 39,000 images have been captured since the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the planet in 2006. The public can view the new images on the HiRISE website by the University of Arizona, which operates the device for NASA.

In the movie, Mark Watney, portrayed by Matt Damon, was part of a mission that takes place 20 years in the future, the time when NASA astronauts regularly visit Mars. Watney was left alone and stranded on the planet because of a fierce storm that forced his team to undergo an emergency evacuation.

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