Six astronauts embark for Europa, a moon of Jupiter that has been found to have water. Pilot Rosa Dasque, along with her crew of five, are on a privately funded mission to explore Europa. Europa is a moon of Jupiter seemingly entirely made up of ice. Reasoning that water might mean life outside of the planet Earth, the Europa One mission embarks on a twenty month journey to find investigate.
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Along the way a solar storm knocks out communications with mission control. The two engineers must exit the ship to conduct repairs. During the repairs the junior engineer is accidentally contaminated with a toxic and unstable chemical. Not being able to risk letting him back on board the ship, he is left to die in space.
Finally landing on Europa, the ship misses their landing zone and are forced to adapt their mission parameters. The lead engineer, still not over the death of his partner, begins to deteriorate mentally. He sees a light outside the ship, but nobody believes that he is stable enough to believe.
One of the ship's scientists chooses to go onto the surface to gather samples. She finds evidence of single-celled organisms on the surface and continues exploring. Seeing the same light, she goes to investigate. The ice cracks beneath her and she is plunged into the freezing water. The feed from her helmet cuts out after showing a light rapidly approaching.
The crew decides they have to leave and get this information back to Earth. They ascend but a malfunction causes them to crash back to the surface. The crew is now down to only two members. They can't possibly repair the ship before it sinks below the waves. They send a message back to Earth before an alien creature enters the ship and the feed cuts out.
Best part of story, including ending:
The story is slow and a little pandering at times. The times between action scenes were painfully long and filled with ineffectual dialogue.
Best scene in story:
The head engineer and the pilot are the only remaining crew of the expedition. The engineer knows that he won't be able to repair the ship in time for them to escape. Knowing this, he chooses to sacrifice their lives by using the life support power to power their communications. The scene is emotional and powerful.
Opinion about the main character:
For one of the first people to ever travel that far into space, the Rosa is too negative through the movie. While it is appropriate toward the end, it came on too early in the film.
