The film takes place from 2015 to 2016.
John Rank was born in 1981.
The Sagan spacecraft is named after scientist Carl Sagan, famous as host of the 1980 documentary series Cosmos and who worked on NASA's Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s.
Both Peter Outerbridge and Kavan Smith appeared in the big-budget Mission to Mars the following year, with Outerbridge playing a Russian cosmonaut.