Mars attracts: the cosy relationship between Nasa and Hollywood

Nasa helped make The Martian. But it also advised on Men in Black III. So what exactly is its relationship with movies? And can the truth survive blockbuster blast-off? The agency's director of planetary science reveals all

A rumour started a few years ago that Nasa routinely screened Armageddon to new recruits. Not because the asteroid-smashing Michael Bay epic was in any way edifying, but for the exact opposite reason: Armageddon got so much wrong that it was a showreel for how space doesn't work. According to one estimate, the movie contains 168 scientific impossibilities and inaccuracies, which Nasa challenged its recruits to spot; they include space shuttles taking off like planes from asteroids, gravity working the wrong way on space stations and the fanciful notion that a nuclear blast could deflect an asteroid the size of Texas - they'd need a bomb a billion times bigger, physicists calculated.

Related: The Martian and Nasa - a coincidence too good to be true?