The Martian Timeline

On sol 6 there is an intense dust and wind storm, which causes an antenna to tear loose and impale astronaut Mark Watney. He gets flung out of sight and he is presumed dead by the crew. The crew have to evacuate quickly, and barely have time to search for him, so they leave Mars using the MAV. It turns out that Mark Watney isn't dead, and is stranded on Mars.

Mindy Park was the person who first discovered that Mark Watney was alive. She entered the coordinates for the location of Ares 3, in Acidalia Planitia and didn't see Mark Watney's body, which would've been there if he was dead. After checking for more clues in the images, she called Venkat Kapoor, and they both confirmed that Watney was alive.

After travelling for a pretty long time away from the Hab on the rover, he finally gets to Pathfinder's location. On this sol, he figures out how to get the lander on top of the rover and also takes the Sojourner rover (which is a part of Pathfinder) back to the rover. Getting Pathfinder was very important for communicating with NASA.

There was a breach in the Hab and the full force of the Hab's atmosphere rushed through the breach, extending the rip from less than 1 millimetre to one meter within a tenth of a second. The rip got so long, that it detached airlock 1, and flew forty meters from the Hab before hitting the ground, at Mark Watney was still inside it and had an EVA suit on. He eventually figured out a way to get back to the Hab and carried out his plan within two days. After he was safe, he assessed the situation of the Hab, and found out that his crops were dead, and only had enough potatoes to last till about sol 600.

There was a problem with the Iris probe and it burst mid-flight and debris fell from the sky. The Iris probe was meant to get food to Mark Watney, so he could survive till Ares 4, but since the probe burst, they can't get food to Watney in time, and have to figure out another way to save him.

Vogel got a message from his wife titled "unsere kinder" ("our children"). It contained nothing but an image attachment. When he tried to open the image, his viewer reported that the file was unreadable so he asked Johanssen to help. It turned out to be a plain ASCII text file which contained the instructions for the Rich Purnell Maneuver, a course maneuver for Hermes which allowed the Hermes to do a flyby by mars and get Mark Watney.

Mark Watney had leaned his drill against the workbench. Part of the drill was metal, and because it was leaning against a metal workbench, it formed a connection and power traveled all the way from the drill to Pathfinder and got fried with 9000 milliamps (it operates on 50 milliamps). That's how Pathfinder died.

The Taiyang Shen is the only space craft that has a booster powerful enough to not only escape Earth's gravity but also match Hermes's current velocity. It is a necessary part for the plan, because the Taiyang Shen carries a probe that contains food and other supplies that is meant to be sent to Hermes, but if it fails then the Hermes crew won't have enough food and supplies to last till the Mars flyby. The launch of the Taiyang Shen is successful and the probe safely gets all the food and supplies to Hermes.

Mark Watney uses the rover and trailer to get to Schiaparelli Crater, where the Ares 4 MAV is located. He takes 56 sols to get there, which is a little longer than he expected because he faces problems along the way, like a dust storm coming right towards him, and the rover and trailer tipping on the way down to the MAV.

The MAV launched with incredible force on sol 549. Unfortunately, there was a rip in the Hab canvas over the MAV, which slowed down the MAV. When the MAV reached space, it was very far away from the Hermes, so they used the altitude thrusters to to speed up the Hermes, so they could get closer to the MAV, but by doing so they would have an intercept velocity of 42 meters per second, which is way too fast. They made a bomb and blew the VAL to produce thrust in the opposite direction, so they could slow down. They eventually got Watney safely aboard the Hermes.