Other mistake: During the storm scene in the beginning of the movie, the astronauts' faces inside the helmets are brightly lit, meaning there's a light source pointed directly in their face. That's something that would render them mostly blind and unable to see and appears to be nothing but a dramatic effect for the camera. (00:05:00 - 00:08:00)
Other mistake: When devising the plan to retrieve Watney, it is mentioned that the Hermes crew have had to lash together all the webbing on board to make the longest possible tether. When this tether is used, there is no evidence of any lashing together or other extensions or modifications to lengthen it. The tether is one continuous length and is stored on a reel that was designed for the length of tether gathered on it.
Other mistake: Rich Purnell explains his plan to redirect the Hermes to Mars in order to rescue Watney, positioning people to represent planets and using a stapler to show the trajectory of the vessel. He is talking to experienced, qualified engineers and technologists working at a very high level on the space programme. They don't need drama school play acting to be understand things like this. He could have explained his plan in the most complex and abstruse terms and they would have been way ahead of him.
Other mistake: The photo that is taken of Watney doing the Fonz pose is in vertical lines, much like the satellite imagery. However, the camera that took this photo was the pathfinder, which took normal black and white images, as seen in the "Yes" "No" question card scene.
Other mistake: When Watney is in zero-g there are loose bolts floating around him. There is no way he would have left loose pieces in the MAV's cabin. Things left unsecured in microgravity tend to float around and damage delicate electronics. If something is not being used it's lashed down or secured in a cabinet. He has one chance to to get rescued and he wouldn't risk dying after over a year of surviving on Mars on something so foolish as unsecured equipment in the MAV cabin. He would have cleaned out every last bit of loose gear before launch.
Other mistake: When Vincent Kapoor first goes to JPL in Pasadena, he gets out of the car and the letters "JPL" are shown on the door. Since the shot is from the inside looking out at Kapoor, the letters should be backwards. No one labels a building for viewing from the inside. (00:43:00)
Other mistake: Upon arriving at the MAV, when Watney opens the door to exit the rover to head to the MAV, the home-made balloon on top of the rover does not deflate, as it should when interior pressure of the Rover is absent.
Other mistake: When Mark Watney is adjusting the solar panels of the path finder there are a few frames where he adjusts a small solar panel and you can see the actor is a completely different person.
Other mistake: When Matt Damon is brought back onto the Hermes, he is surrounded by his crewmates who are not in spacesuits. All air from the Hermes outside the control room had been expelled by the explosion, and could not have been replaced in the recovery time frame.
Suggested correction: The first priority would have been to only replenish the air in the corridors leading from the bridge to the airlock, since these are the 2 locations the crew need access to. They did not need to replace all the air in the ship at once, just a relatively small area.
Suggested correction: This isn't really a mistake. Yes, the character oversimplified the explanation but, as is shown when the character is introduced, he doesn't exhibit typical social behaviour. To him it's probably normal to explain things that way to strangers (which is basically what the people he's talking to are).
I think this is one of those borderline mistakes. Movies and TV shows often have a character over-simplify things, especially when involving science, for the audiences' sake and not for any of the characters. This type of mistake is similar to when characters start a conversation, but the show skips time by having characters arrive at a new location in the next scene without showing them traveling, but then the characters continue their conversation for the audiences' sake.
Bishop73