'The Martian' star Matt Damon: We need to 'double down' on space exploration

TORONTO, Canada – Matt Damon stars in the upcoming Ridley Scott sci-fi epic “The Martian,” based on the best-selling book by Andy Weir. Damon stars as an astronaut stuck on Mars after his crew departs presuming he’s dead. Damon’s character then needs to figure out how to survive on the inhospitable red rock.

“NASA was kind of consulting for us the entire time” Damon told FOX411 at the Toronto Film Festival, where the movie was being screened. "This proposition of, alright, could the right guy, if he was really highly trained, survive on Mars for an extended period of time? And so starting from that proposition [author Weir] kind of let the science completely dictate the story, and everything that Mark does is exactly what you would have to do, kind of step by step, if you were going to survive. So yeah we needed it to be heavily based and researched.”

Damon said making "The Martian" has convinced him that we need to do more to get our astronauts back into space more often.

"I think we need to double down and, you know, it’s very important that we get some of us off of planet earth so that we’re not one extinction level event away from just the obliteration of the human species, the disappearance of the human species," he said. "We have to start moving off this one place. So no, we should go faster.”

"The Martian" comes out on October 2.