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Photographer: 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Everett Collection Photographer: 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Everett Collection

It's been a big week for Mars—and for NASA, which hopes to get there. First came the agency's announcement about detecting flowing water on the planet, news that made headlines around the world. Closing out the week, NASA will make its way to movie theaters, with the premiere of the Matt Damon-Ridley Scott movie, The Martian.

Both events mean very good things for NASA's planned foray to the Red Planet. It's one of the agency's longest-term projects, with no plans for astronauts on Mars until at least 2035—and maybe even decades later. That time frame is a challenge: How do you sustain public excitement, much less congressional funding, over a quarter century or more? Cue the savvy PR, including NASA's close involvement with the development and promotion of The Martian. The agency offered technical advice and hosted actors, producers, and set designers at its Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. NASA also screened the movie for employees in various locations and invited stars of the film to Houston and Cape Canaveral for several Martian-related events.

A discovery like this deserves a toast from Watney himself. #MarsAnnouncement #TheMartian https://t.co/7VKoMP8Gex — The Martian Movie (@MartianMovie) September 29, 2015

“I think they’re petty happy with the movie because it will increase public interest,” said Andy Weir, the California software engineer who wrote the novel on which the film is based. Flattering the space agency wasn’t one of his aims. “The goal wasn’t to be a commercial for NASA,” he said. “My sole purpose for writing is entertainment. I portray NASA as pretty cool, but I think NASA is pretty cool.”

The Martian, Matt Damon, 2015. Photographer: 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Everett Collection

In the film, Damon portrays NASA astronaut Mark Watney, stranded on Mars after a storm separates him from the rest of the crew. Damon has now become something of a public advocate for human space exploration. “The journey to Mars will forever change our history books, rewriting what we know about the red planet and expanding a human presence deeper into the solar system,” the actor said in a video clip he recorded as part of the new movie's promotion.

NASA is working to maximize the return on its collaboration with the production. The agency hosted actors Mackenzie Davis and Sebastian Stan from the film for a video chat with two crew members on the ISS, screened the film for employees, and is hosting a “So You Want to be a Martian” panel discussion on Oct. 1 with NASA officials and two actors from The Martian answering questions from nearly 10,000 students via video stream.

Recent big-budget films on which NASA has consulted, such as Gravity, Interstellar, and Europa Report, helped reinsert human space exploration into popular culture. But The Martian—a mostly realistic portrayal of what it would take to reach Mars and survive in its atmosphere—turns NASA into a central character.

“This [film] is very intimate with NASA in terms of story and character,” said Weir, who was not involved in writing the screenplay. “I think not since Apollo 13 have we seen something that’s this closely connected with NASA.” Weir called the interplay of NASA’s high-profile scientific breakthroughs (think water on Mars) and the resulting public interest a “virtuous cycle” that could lead to better funding and more science.

This low-angle self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target called "Buckskin." The MAHLI camera on Curiosity's robotic arm took multiple images on Aug. 5, 2015, that were stitched together into this selfie. Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

In keeping with the Mars PR blitz, NASA teased its news conference about flowing water on Monday with the tag, “Mars Mystery Solved." The agency has said the paper’s release wasn't coordinated with the film and that the timing was coincidental. But it also was a stroke of immense PR luck, given the vast media attention the discovery garnered just days within the opening of a film that puts NASA before the kind of huge audience it rarely enjoys. It also helps raise awareness of the agency's plan to actually put people on Mars, an engineering feat that would be a quantum leap beyond the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing in difficulty and expense.

That financial aspect is most likely the trickiest problem to solve: NASA's current $18 billion annual budget is dispersed widely across scientific priorities, with the agency's Journey to Mars program receiving less than $500 million. Because of NASA's broad mandate and uncertain funding from Congress, it's tough to allocate more money to Mars and thereby sacrifice other worthy science.

That's why Hollywood offers such an important PR boost, even if the impact is brief. “I put [movies] in the short-term buzz category,” former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. “But at this point it’s really all we have. Mars is so long of a term project and the set of reasons for going are individual and amorphous, it’s hard to keep a constant public drumbeat of support for it.”