The Martian

This chapter marks a shift in narrative style—instead of Watney’s mission log, it opens in a third-person point of view. It is the day of Watney’s memorial, two months after his “death.” At NASA, Venkat Kapoor, director of Mars operations, is in conversation with Teddy Sanders, the head of NASA. Venkat is arguing to get satellite imagery of the Ares 3 Hab and surroundings on Mars. He believes that whatever materials were left behind could be used for future missions, and he'd like to see what equipment survived the dust storm. Teddy, who has been denying this request for the past two months, finally explains his reasoning to Venkat: Because NASA is a public domain organization, all imagery that they take becomes public. He is afraid that Watney’s body is visible and would be recorded by satellite imagery, broadcast to the public. It would be a public relations disaster. However, after some negotiating, Teddy agrees to approve satellite imagery of the Ares 3 mission site on Mars.

Mindy Park, a satellite communications officer at NASA, is assigned the task of looking over this satellite imagery. After comparing several images from different times, she realizes that the rover pop-up tents have been deployed, an event that was not recorded in the mission log.