The plain where Mark Watney was stranded in 'The Martian.'
Acidalia Planitia is a sprawling dark plain in the northern lowlands, best known as the fictional Ares 3 landing site in Andy Weir's 'The Martian.' It sits between the Tharsis volcanoes and Arabia Terra and is dotted with mysterious mound features some scientists link to ancient mud volcanism.
Claim your plot here →Acidalia Planitia is one of the darkest large plains on Mars, a low-lying basin that likely lay near or below the shoreline of a hypothetical ancient northern ocean. Its floor is covered in fine sediment and tens of thousands of small mounds, which some researchers interpret as mud volcanoes — evidence that water-rich material was forced up from beneath the surface billions of years ago.
The plain owes its fame to fiction: it is the setting for the Ares 3 mission in 'The Martian,' where the crew's habitat and the stranded astronaut's farm are imagined. In reality it remains a prime scientific target because buried ice and sediment here could preserve records of past Martian water and climate.