Corrected entry: Wouldn't they travel in the desert at night? Not only would this conserve water but because they are astronauts they should know constellations, their flares would be seen from further away, and they would be much harder to find by helicopters. They would also be able to see near by towns and traffic better from light pollution.
Corrected entry: When the three Astronauts crash the Lear jet in the desert, on the outside shots of them walking in their separate directions, there are no marks behind the jet to show that it skidded across the surface where it stopped.
Correction: The fine desert dust would have been easily capable of settling back down and covering such tracks. Also a possibility, is that the surface was too hard to make tracks in in the first place.
Corrected entry: During a rocket/shuttle takeoff, no vehicle or flying aircraft is allowed anywhere near, yet during the last five minutes of the countdown, a van picks up the astronauts and drives them to a helicopter. The helicopter couldn't be very far away because of the short time left on the countdown, and the helicopter could never have stealthily flown off or be allowed to fly off without NASA radar picking it up, never mind the flight to the Lear jet.
Correction: Key NASA personnel had to be in on the conspiracy. The radar was just ignored.
Corrected entry: Elliot Gould who plays the character of Caulfield is very obviously not a smoker. When he is travelling in his girlfriends car after being released from jail, he doesn't once smoke his cigarette despite it being in his mouth for much of the conversation in the car. When he gets out of the car, he takes a drag from the cigarette, but again, as he's not a smoker in his real life, the smoke is blown straight back out of his mouth.
Correction: Perhaps his character is trying to quit smoking. A friend, who was trying to quit, used to have a cigar or cigarette in his mouth, often unlit, in an attempt to cut down and eventually quit smoking. The same applies for inhaling.
Corrected entry: During the crop-duster chase with the helicopters, the interior of the filming helo is visible on the left side of the frame for a brief moment. Very noticeable.
Correction: The inside of the helo is the inside of the second chase helo.
Corrected entry: Stated in the early part of the movie, several times, it takes we minutes for a radio transmission to travel between Earth and Mars. but the astronauts carry on a real time conversation with their wives from the surface of Mars. Wouldn't this have immediately blown the conspiracy? Would NASA ever screw up that bad on such a simple detail?
Correction: Like The Martian and others, the assumption is that the long waits between messages are cut out, because watching a lot of people waiting doesn't make for good cinema.
Correction: This is more a question than a mistake. They're running for their lives, so the "logical" course of action may not be what they choose.