In the near future, humanity begins looking at space for alternative places to live and the possibility of finding intelligent life, this culminates in forming colonies both on Mars and the Moon. Major Roy works as an astronaut, which has been his dream since he was a little kid, and is currently taking a psych evaluation before accepting his next mission. He assures the doctors that he's fine, and he keeps up an excellent poker face, but he can't stop thinking about the fact his wife Eve has left him because his work takes up most of his time. Today's mission consists of fixing a robotic arm at one of Earth's many space antennas.
Roy climbs an extremely high ladder without any trace of fear, but things quickly get nasty when a strange light begins blinking. Suddenly a power surge causes part of the antenna to explode and many astronauts begin falling to their deaths. Roy immediately goes looking for the power lever and shuts it down, but another explosion hits him and he falls as well. Surprisingly he stays very calm, and when he's close enough to Earth, he releases his parachute, which allows him to land safely. Later at home, Roy thinks he should be feeling something after such an unlikely survival, but he only keeps remembering Eve telling him he has a self-destructive side.
He also watches the news and learns that electrical storms have been wreaking havoc across the globe. Sometime later, the higher-ups from Space com call Roy for a top-secret meeting because they're very impressed by his ability to keep calm in the worst situations, plus the fact he has no family to hold him back. They show him spectrogram images of Neptune full of cosmic ray bursts, which are causing the electrical surges. The Lima Project is brought up, a name Roy's familiar with because the commander behind that mission had been his father Clifford. It was the first manned expedition to the outer solar system, which began twenty-nine years ago, but sixteen years into the mission the ship disappeared and all data was lost.
Deep space missions were halted after that. As far as they know the crew was dead, however the power surges make them think Clifford may still be alive. The surges seem to be caused by an anti-matter reaction, which was the material that fueled the mission. This may cause a potentially unstoppable chain reaction that could threaten the stability of the entire solar system and destroy all life in it. Space com wants Roy to travel to Mars and send a message to Clifford, perhaps hearing his son's voice will finally make him send a sign back. Still keeping a poker face while hearing about his dad, Roy accepts the mission, although he knows he has no choice and they're just using him.
Afterward Roy begins getting ready for the trip and decides to watch the last video his father ever sent him, which was recorded right before he reached Neptune. The man left when Roy was still sixteen and his message is mostly rambling about the possibility of finding life, but at least he ends it with an "I love you, son". At that moment Roy is approached by Pruitt, an old friend of his father's that will also go on this mission. Pruitt wants to know if Roy is doing well emotionally, and when Roy explains he still thinks his dad is dead, Pruitt points out they need to be ready for the possibility that Clifford is hiding from them.
The night before the mission, Roy tries to record a message for Eve, but in the end he doesn't know what to say and doesn't record anything. For the next psych evaluation, he admits he hasn't slept much but he still feels ready, so his trip is approved. Since the mission is completely secret, Roy will fly commercially to the Moon as a cover and then reach Mars from there. The journey is very calm, but all passengers are reminded that the Moon is borderless and many mining zones are disputed territories in a state of war. When they make it to the colony, Roy notices it's become a commercial recreation and thinks Clifford would've hated it all.
Roy and Pruitt take the train to the Space com base and Pruitt explains nobody here knows about their mission either. The launchpad is on the other side of no man's land, so they'll have armed personnel to protect them. Roy wonders what was the last time Pruitt talked to his dad, and Pruitt confesses it had been a fight - since Pruitt had thought of retiring, Clifford called him a traitor. Pruitt wonders if Roy is worried, but Roy admits he isn't: he thinks his dad is a hero and is disgusted by how Space Com wants to paint him as the villain. At the base, Pruitt and Roy are assigned to rovers and they leave
surrounded by soldiers. However when they reach an open area, they're soon ambushed by pirates, who open fire on them. The two escorting rovers immediately go down, and Roy's suit gets punctured, but fortunately he manages to quickly fix it. The driver of his rover is shot too, and Roy pushes the body off to take over, driving among some of the base's structures to make some pirates crash. Then Roy tries to shoot at the remaining pirates, but they hit his rover with theirs and cause him to fall into a crater. Roy pretends he's lost control of the vehicle, and once the pirates are gone, he begins driving again, getting to escape through the darkness.
The base launches some missiles to kill the pirates once they're far enough. When they finally make it to the launchpad, Pruitt confesses he was hurt during the attack and won't be able to go to Mars. Roy knows he should be upset over losing his safety blanket, but continues to bottle up his emotions. Before Roy leaves, Pruitt gives him a drive with confidential information, confessing it'll put Roy in grave danger because their higher-ups don't trust him. Roy gets in the rocket to Mars, where he meets the crew and Captain Tanner, who inform him Pruitt was taken for emergency surgery. This trip will last nineteen days, and nobody in this crew knows Roy's real mission either. Mood stabilizers are distributed, but Roy hides in his suit instead of taking it. When he has a moment alone, he checks Pruitt's drive, which shows that SpaceCom received an SOS signal from the Lima Project crew that indicated Clifford intentionally disabled all external communications.
If the mission isn't successful in contacting Clifford, then they must destroy the Lima Project and Clifford himself to stop the surges. Roy wonders what happened to his dad and if he really lost control, remembering the fact Clifford had promised him they could work together someday yet it never happened. Sometime later, they receive a distress call from a space station, and Tanner feels obliged to help them as protocol dictates. Roy wants to concentrate on his own mission but his protests are ignored. Since the co-pilot is scared, Roy volunteers to go with Tanner to the space station, where they split to cover more ground.
Roy finds some scratches on the walls, and when he reunites with Tanner, he finds him floating and shaking. When he comes closer, Roy discovers there's a baboon feeding on Tanner. The animal attacks as soon as it sees Roy, but he fights it and manages to shake it off by tasing it. Then a second baboon shows up, so Roy grabs Tanner and takes him into another room before closing the door hatch. Roy tries to seal Tanner's helmet with some duct tape, but soon he has to return to the door to keep it closed because the baboon is trying to open it. He finds the pressure hatch and releases it, making the baboons explode. Moments later Roy brings Tanner back into their ship, but no matter how hard the doctors work, Tanner doesn't survive and his body is thrown into space.
Later while everyone's sleeping, Roy takes another psych evaluation and explains Tanner died without showing any emotions. When the computer voice asks him for details, Roy confesses he recognizes the baboon's rage as his own, he's always had rage in him because his dad left. However if he looks under the rage all he finds is hurt, which is keeping him away from relationships. The copilot takes over captain duties and Roy becomes the copilot in his place. When they finally approach Mars, they're hit by a power surge and the ship needs to be landed manually instead of using the auto-landing sequence.
The pilot is too scared to react, so Roy takes over the controls and lands the ship himself, promising his partner he won't report him to SpaceCom. The crew makes it to the Ersa Research Station, where Roy meets director Helen. She doesn't know about the secret mission either, so she only gets to escort him to the building where the other employees are working in confidence. Roy is given a very cold pre-written message to read, promising Clifford they're here to help and that they need any data he may have. Unfortunately they don't get any replies and the technicians decide to try again later. Roy spends some time in the "comfort room", where he tries to decide if he hopes to find his dad or wants to be free from him.
When the time comes to send another message, Roy drops the script they gave him and begins talking from the heart. He mentions childhood memories and the fact he's become an astronaut too, expressing his wish to see his father again. Roy waits to see what happens and notices the technicians getting excited around the comms, meaning they got an answer. However when Roy asks to hear the message, the higher-ups don't give him access to it and announce he'll be sent back to Earth because his personal connection makes him unfit for the mission. On his way out, Roy notices a crew is getting ready to travel, but they ignore his questions.
Before going to Earth they put Roy through another psych evaluation, but his desperation and anger finally make him crack and mess with his biorhythms, thus he's sent back to the comfort room for the time being. Sometime later, Helen visits Roy to get some answers. At first Roy tries to keep the secret, but Helen changes his mind by explaining she was born here on Mars and that her parents died in the Lima Project. The higher-ups made her prepare a rocket with nuclear munitions, which will be leaving for Neptune soon, and she wants to know why. Roy tells her the little he knows, and Helen responds by sharing a video they received some time ago.
It turns out Clifford is indeed alive, and screams can be heard behind him in the recording. Clifford explains his crew started to boycott the mission because they wanted to go home, so he had no choice but to kill them all. SpaceCom made Clifford a hero in the public eye to cover it all. Roy wants to confront his father, thus Helen sneaks him out of the base in a rover and drops him by a sewer entrance so he can gain access to the rocket in secret. After a few minutes spent under dirty water, Roy reaches the launchpad and manages to climb into the rocket right before it takes off. The crew immediately detects his presence and Roy tries to explain he isn't a threat, but the base sends orders for him to be neutralized.
Two astronauts go after him, but at that moment the rocket gains speed and the force sends one of the astronauts flying against the wall, killing her. The second astronaut fights Roy and the captain tries to shoot him, but he fails and hits the oxygen tanks instead. The air begins to get poisonous and Roy tries to help the captain by putting a mask on him, but it's too late: both astronauts are dead. The bodies are thrown out of the rocket and Roy sends one last message to the base, confirming he'll finish the mission before he turns off all comms. The trip will last seventy-nine days, which Roy will have to spend alone with his guilt. He connects a feeding tube directly to his stomach and electrodes on his body to stimulate his muscles.
Roy tries to keep himself busy by thinking of Eve and his dad. However he makes the mistake of watching Eve's last message when she confessed she felt like she didn't know him because he was always away, he also watches videos of the time his dad was still sane and hopeful. All these clips make his mood tank, and Roy keeps dreaming of his childhood, his mother, his dad, and Eve. Roy used to wish he could be alone, but the loneliness on the ship is breaking his sanity as well, and he realizes how many people he's let down all these years and how selfish he's been. By the time he finally approaches Neptune, Roy is on the edge of losing it, but he manages to put himself together for the mission. He takes a shuttle to fly to the Lima station, but suddenly he gets hit by another power surge and the shuttle begins failing.
Roy tries to dock to no avail, and trying to contact his father gets him no answers. He has no choice but to leave the pod and spacewalk into the Lima station. Inside, Roy finds the crew's bodies floating around and an old music video playing on a screen. He also finds his dad's room, where he can see all the signs of obsession with finding life in space. Roy goes further inside and begins programming the explosive when Clifford finally finds him, and while Roy keeps his poker face, the sadness is still clear in his eyes. Clifford explains he's been trying to stop the surge, which was caused by the crew's boycott. The captain must go down with the ship, and Clifford considers this his home. He has no interest in returning to Earth, and he admits never caring about his family.
Roy tells him he still loves him and reaches out to grab his hands, which Clifford accepts after some hesitation. While Roy helps his dad get into his suit, Clifford says he's proud of his son for traveling all the way here and wonders if they could've made a better team, because his crew checked the data and when they found no signs of life, they immediately gave up. Roy points out this isn't a failure because now they know they are all they got. They activate the bomb to explode in three hours and leave the station, but as soon as they make it outside, Clifford tries to throw himself into space. Roy holds onto their anchoring rope to keep him close, but Clifford begs for freedom and Roy decides to grant him this last wish.
The rope is unhooked and as Clifford floats away into the abyss, Roy finally allows himself to have a breakdown. He floats for a while, wondering if he should give up too, but then he realizes he still has one more chance. Using his suit's propellers, Roy returns to the Lima station and removes a panel door, which he uses to protect himself from the asteroids in order to cross Neptune's rings. As he makes his way back to the rocket, Roy remembers the last words his father told him while he downloaded the research data. Clifford said that by obsessing so much on finding life, he ignored all the beauty on the planets' surfaces.
Roy hits the side of the rocket, and after rolling around for a bit, he manages to hold onto the railing and get back inside. He doesn't have enough fuel left, so he waits for Lima to explode and uses the shock wave to propel the rocket. Many days later, Roy lands safely on Earth and a group of soldiers immediately rescue him, assuring him the Lima data arrived safely as well. During his next psych evaluation, Roy says he's been sleeping well, and that he's aware of his surroundings. Now he's also very aware of his loved ones, so he's finally ready to commit and reunite with Eve to start things over.
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