Plot
In 2015, the first crewed mission to Mars will be launched. The crew consists of five astronauts, two of whom are women. In addition to technical problems that arise, tensions arise between the crew members during the long flight to Mars. Only during the course of the trip does it emerge that Commander Rank has recently separated from his wife and is avoiding any personal contact with her. He behaves coldly towards the other crew members.
The landing on Mars is successful and the space shuttle touches down just 17 meters from the planned landing site. Shortly after landing on Mars, astronaut Lia learns that her fiancé had a fatal accident on an icy road. However, after some time she is able to overcome the loss by concentrating on her task within the mission. The lander is damaged by meteorite impacts on the planet. The crew flees to a nearby cave to escape the bombardment. Astronaut Singer is injured.
Astronauts John Rank and Sergei Andropov take an exploration trip with the Mars vehicle into the nearby mountains to search for raw materials and signs of life; They get caught in a violent sandstorm that overturns the Mars rover. Both men are injured. Andropov's spacesuit is damaged, leaking vital oxygen. John saves Sergei's life by giving him his oxygen supply. The two astronauts Lia Poirier and Bill Malone start a rescue mission with the replacement vehicle and eventually find their injured crew members. Sergei survives with serious injuries, while John dies from lack of oxygen.
Sergei points to an opposite rock face with a fluorescent appearance, which has its origins in bioorganisms. This successfully proves life on Mars. John Rank is buried on Mars and celebrated as a lifesaver. At the end of the mission, after a year and a half stay on Mars, the crew learned from ground control that there would not be enough fuel and supplies for the five astronauts to fly back. The tragic loss of a crew member turns out to be a stroke of luck for the remaining crew: by recalculating fuel consumption and supplies, ground control gives the green light for a safe return to the home planet Earth.
Apollo 13 was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and would have been the third Moon landing. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) exploded two days into the mission, disabling its electrical and life-support system. The crew, supported by backup systems on the lunar module (LM), instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17. The mission was commanded by Jim Lovell, with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella.
Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was planned to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program, the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbital test of the Apollo command and service module. The mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module (CM). The name Apollo 1, chosen by the crew, was made official by NASA in their honor after the fire.
Human spaceflight is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be remotely operated from ground stations on Earth, or autonomously, without any direct human involvement. People trained for spaceflight are called astronauts, cosmonauts (Russian), or taikonauts (Chinese); and non-professionals are referred to as spaceflight participants or spacefarers.
A space suit is an environmental suit used for protection from the harsh environment of outer space, mainly from its vacuum as a highly specialized pressure suit, but also its temperature extremes, as well as radiation and micrometeoroids. Basic space suits are worn as a safety precaution inside spacecrafts in case of loss of cabin pressure. For extravehicular activity (EVA) more complex space suits are worn, featuring a portable life support system.
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan. The screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert dramatizes the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission and is an adaptation of the 1994 book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
Capricorn One is a 1977 thriller film in which a reporter discovers that a supposed Mars landing by a crewed mission to the planet has been faked via a conspiracy involving the government and—under duress—the crew themselves. It was written and directed by Peter Hyams and produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment. It stars Elliott Gould as the reporter, and James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O. J. Simpson as the astronauts. Hal Holbrook plays a senior NASA official who goes along with governmental and corporate interests and helps to fake the mission. The music score was created by Jerry Goldsmith.
Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film in Panavision co-produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Carl Sagan. Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film. It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. It also stars Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse. It features the Very Large Array in New Mexico, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Mir space station, and the Space Coast surrounding Cape Canaveral.
A space capsule is a spacecraft designed to transport cargo, scientific experiments, and/or astronauts to and from space. Capsules are distinguished from other spacecraft by the ability to survive reentry and return a payload to the Earth's surface from orbit or sub-orbit, and are distinguished from other types of recoverable spacecraft by their blunt shape, not having wings and often containing little fuel other than what is necessary for a safe return. Capsule-based crewed spacecraft such as Soyuz or Orion are often supported by a service or adapter module, and sometimes augmented with an extra module for extended space operations. Capsules make up the majority of crewed spacecraft designs, although one crewed spaceplane, the Space Shuttle, has flown in orbit.
Mission to Mars is a 2000 American science fiction adventure film directed by Brian De Palma, written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas, and Graham Yost, and suggested by Disney's theme park attraction of the same name. The film depicts the first crewed Mars exploration mission going awry; American astronaut Jim McConnell helps to coordinate a rescue mission for a colleague. Principal support actors were Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, Jerry O'Connell, and Kim Delaney.
Marooned is a 1969 American science fiction film directed by John Sturges and starring Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus and Gene Hackman about three astronauts who are trapped and slowly suffocating in space. It was based on the 1964 novel Marooned by Martin Caidin. While the original novel was based on the single-pilot Project Mercury, the film depicted an Apollo command and service module with three astronauts and a space station resembling Skylab. Caidin acted as technical adviser and updated the novel, incorporating appropriate material from the original version.
The Martian Chronicles is a 1980 television three-episode miniseries based on Ray Bradbury's 1950 book The Martian Chronicles and dealing with the exploration of Mars and the inhabitants there. The series starred Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin, Bernadette Peters, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Weaver, Barry Morse, and Maria Schell. It was aired on NBC in January 1980 in three episodes with a total running time of just over four hours. The series depicts Mars as having a "thin atmosphere" which humans can breathe, with water-filled canals and desert-like vegetation. The miniseries was directed by Michael Anderson and written by Richard Matheson.
RocketMan is a 1997 American comic science fiction film directed by Stuart Gillard and starring Harland Williams, Jessica Lundy, William Sadler, and Jeffrey DeMunn. A partial remake of the 1967 film, The Reluctant Astronaut, it was produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Caravan Pictures, and was released on October 10, 1997.
The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars. Long-term proposals have included sending settlers and terraforming the planet. Currently, only robotic landers and rovers have been on Mars. The farthest humans have been beyond Earth is the Moon, under the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Apollo program which ended in 1972.
Stranded is a 2001 English-language Spanish science fiction film about a fictional first crewed mission to Mars. It stars Vincent Gallo and Maria de Medeiros, and was directed by Spanish filmmaker and actress María Lidón, with screenplay by Spanish science fiction author Juan Miguel Aguilera. Lidón won the "Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver", and Gallo and de Medeiros were named best actors at the 2002 Fantafestival in Rome.
Space architecture is the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space. This mission statement for space architecture was developed in 2002 by participants in the 1st Space Architecture Symposium, organized at the World Space Congress in Houston, by the Aerospace Architecture Subcommittee, Design Engineering Technical Committee (DETC), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
The Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test, or SMEAT, was a 56-day simulation of an American Skylab space mission from 26 July-19 September 1972 at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. The astronauts in the test were Bob Crippen, Karol Bobko, and William Thornton, who simulated space experiments, housekeeping and leisure activities in a hypobaric chamber. SMEAT provided a baseline for the in-orbit portion of biomedical experiments on Skylab.
Astronaut: The Last Push is a 2012 American science fiction film directed by Eric Hayden in his feature directorial debut. It stars Khary Payton, in his first starring role, Lance Henriksen, and Brian Baumgartner.
Mission Mars is a 1967 American science fiction film. It was produced by Everett Rosenthal, with a screenplay by Mike St. Clair from a story by Aubrey Wisberg, and directed by Nick Webster.
Tammy Isbell is a Canadian actress.
