Europa Report

Dr. Unger (Embeth Davidtz), CEO of Europa Ventures, narrates the story of the Europa One mission. Europe One was the first attempt to send men and women into deep space.

Six astronauts embark on a privately funded mission to Jupiter's moon Europa to find potential sources of life.

Remote space crafts had found evidence of liquid water beneath the surface ice on Europa (which was assumed to be a solid ball of ice orbiting Jupiter). Also, later missions, found heat signatures on Europa (in an area known as the Conamara Chaos) that indicated the presence of mono-cellular life.

The crew members are commander William Xu (Daniel Wu), pilot Rosa Dasque (Anamaria Marinca), chief science officer Daniel Luxembourg (Christian Camargo), marine biology science officer Katya Petrovna (Karolina Wydra), junior engineer James Corrigan (Sharlto Copley) and chief engineer Andrei Blok (Michael Nyqvist). Andrei is the most experienced astronaut with 349 days in outer space.

The spaceship itself is large and has a crew quarters module, cargo module, navigation cockpit, science station and other modules. The crew quarters rotate around the core module, giving the section, simulated gravity.

The initial few months of the journey are fairly routine with exercising. Routine repairs to the ship, getting to know the other crew members and adjusting to their quirks.

After six months of mission time, a solar storm hits the ship, knocking out communication with mission control. Due to this solar event, no communications have been received from the Europe craft for 16 months (22 months post launch), as narrated by Dr. Samantha Unger. Unger explains that with thousands of hours of recently declassified footage, the story of Europa One can now be completed by Europa Ventures.

Back to the ship, after the solar storm had hit. Blok and Corrigan perform an extra-vehicular activity (EVA) to repair the system from outside but an accident (while taking out receptor pins from a fried communications panel) rips Blok's suit. While he is being guided back into the airlock, Blok notices that Corrigan's suit has been coated with Hydrazine (that got released from the communications panel) and he cannot enter the airlock or else he would contaminate the rest of the ship. The air will become toxic and there is no way to decontaminate.

Blok attempts to save Corrigan by taking him out of his suit, but he blacks out from a lack of oxygen. Knowing there is no hope for himself, Corrigan pushes Blok into the airlock, thus propelling himself away from the ship as it continues its journey to Europa. Stranded, he dies in space; the crew continue with the mission, demoralized by Corrigan's death.

The crew is depressed that people on Earth don't even know that the crew is alive and still progressing towards Europa.

After twenty months post launch, the ship goes into orbit around Europa and its lunar lander lands safely on Europa but misses its target zone (after a vent erupts at the target landing site and the lander is pushed further into the air). Andrei was supposed to stay back on the orbiter, but now with James gone, Andrei is the only engineer on the team. Xu is forced to take Andrei with them to the surface on the lander. The lander is 100 meters away from their target landing zone. The target area was ripe with vents that originated deep underwater, and hence would have made it easy to analyze the water from the surface and to deploy the probe as well.

The crew drills through the ice and releases a probe into the underlying sea. The ship is hit by a series of quakes seemingly from Europa's shifting ice. The surface temperature on Europa is close to absolute zero.

Blok, who is sleep-deprived and eliciting concern in the rest of the crew, sees a light outside the ship but he is unable to record it or otherwise convince the crew of its occurrence. Katya says that it could be some sort of luminescent bacteria clinging to the underside of the ice.

The probe is struck by an unknown lighted object and contact with it is lost. The lighted object shoots out a surge of radiation which knocks out the probe.

Petrovna insists on collecting samples on Europa's surface, now that the probe is lost (there is radiation on the surface, but Petrovna insists that its only 200 rads and she is willing to take the risk). Katya argues that their target landing zone is only a 100 meters away and the underbelly of the ice is exposed there due to the vents, making it easier for her to collect the samples needed to determine the presence of life.

The crew votes and she is allowed to go. Analyzing the samples, Luxembourg discovers traces of a single-celled organism. Petrovna sees a blue light in the distance and decides to investigate it. As she approaches the light the ice below her breaks, and she falls through. Her head-mounted camera continues to broadcast, displaying her terrified face as the blue bio-luminescence is reflected in her eyes, before cutting out.

The crew agrees to leave to report their discovery (That there is a complex organism on Europa) to Earth but the engines malfunction. As the lander hurtles back to Europa's surface, Xu unbuckles from his seat to dump water shielding to reduce the impact speed. Remarkably, the ship crashes at the originally targeted landing site. On impact, Xu is killed, and the lander is damaged, leaking oxygen and losing heat. It begins to sink into the ice.

Blok and Luxembourg suit up to make repairs outside the ship. Luxembourg tries to descend but falls through the ice. Blok knows that there is no chance that he alone will be able to repair the lander before it sinks. Instead, he manages to fix the communication link to the orbiting mother ship, at the expense of turning off the life support systems, just before the same blue light Petrovna saw approaches and he appears to fall through the ice as well.

Dasque re-establishes communication with Earth; all the collected images and data that have been saved since the solar storm are relayed to Earth via the mother ship, just as the ice cracks and the lander begins to sink. Alone and anticipating her death, Dasque opens the airlock to flood the lander in hopes of revealing the source of the light. As the water rises to the cockpit, she sees a tentacled, bio-luminescent creature rising toward her, before the camera cuts out.

In the epilogue, narrator Samantha Unger confirms that the crew of Europa had discovered life and exceeded every expectation, as the footage plays from an earlier scene of the crew posing in front of the camera.