Fiction vs Non-Fiction

In the new movie "The Martian," Matt Damon, who plays as an astronaut named Mark Watney, is left behind on Mars, after a huge sand storm forms. This forces him and his crew to evacuate the planet, but during the evacuation an antenna fly's off and knocks him out, leaving him stranded.  Even though the sand storm looks really cool in the movie, it is very unlikely that a sand storm in Mars has enough power to pick up an antenna and make it fly so far away, and take someone with it in the process.

Mars does have huge sand storm from time to time, some can even grow to be continental storms, and can even last weeks.  According to NASA's Planetary scientist Micheal Smith,
“Once every three Mars years (about 5 ½ Earth years), on average, normal storms grow into planet-encircling dust storms, and we usually call those ‘global dust storms’ to distinguish them."

Even though these storms can be at a global scale, the strongest winds in Mars top out about 60 miles per hour. This is due to Mars atmosphere being up to 1% as dense as Earths atmosphere, and because of the lack of air on Mars winds cannot reach the same intensity as here on Earth. 

This information was provided by NASA, and its Planetary department, if you wish to read more about this article please go to this link. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/the-fact-and-fiction-of-martian-dust-storms