The year is 2020, and in Dickinson, Texas, a group of astronauts is having a party with their loved ones to celebrate that they’ll be leaving on the first mission to Mars soon. Woody and his wife Terry are happy that they’ll be working together, while Phil is trying to score with any woman that will pay attention to him. Luke tries to cheer up his son, who isn’t very happy about the fact his dad will be leaving for so long.
Jim also comes to the party, although he’s a bit late, and he, Woody, and Luke end up discussing the mission together. Jim is actually the most accomplished pilot among them and the Mars mission had originally been his, but because of his wife's illness he had to interrupt preparations for the flight and Luke took over. Luke feels guilty because this had been Jim’s dream, but Jim wishes them the best of luck.
When nobody else is looking, Jim leaves a footprint on the sandbox, imagining it’s Mars. Thirteen months later, the crew has landed in Cydonia, Mars. A remote-control robot wanders around the planet, collecting information with its camera.
Suddenly, the team spots a mysterious bright white formation sixteen kilometers from their location, and analyzing it reveals it’s not volcanic ash, but something more like ice. After reporting it to the International Space Station, they set out to investigate. Meanwhile at the Mars Expedition Control Center, Jim and the rest of the crew watch a video feed from the team on Mars, hearing Luke explain that this mysterious phenomenon may be a groundwater discharge, which means they may’ve found a way to settle on the planet.
Back to the team on Mars, they’re arriving at the anomalous occurrence when suddenly, they begin to hear a strange low sound, which they mistake for interference from the rover. As they get closer to the mountain, the astronauts turn on the radar, which shows the presence of metal under the entire mountain. The team decides to check the formation again by increasing the radar power, but now the signal gets interrupted and there’s complete silence, which leaves them very confused.
All of a sudden, a giant whirlwind begins to rise around the mountain, shockingly chasing the astronauts as if it knew what it was doing. The whirlwind captures the astronauts as rocks fly up into the air, smashing into people while the whirlwind sucks everything in its path. When the vortex finally subsides, it reveals that the mysterious mountain is a huge humanoid face.
As a result of this incident, the space station detects an extremely powerful burst of energy and the crew has a meeting to decide what to do. Woody, Terry, and Phil also arrive at the station and while they’re told about what happened, a faint signal comes in from the Mars 1 mission camp, which means some of the crew survived after all. The crew turns on the distress call and finds a recording from Luke, who confusedly describes what happened to his crew, explaining he’s the only survivor before the transmission abruptly ends.
It seems the incident knocked out all the computers and they can’t contact Luke again, so the only chance to find out what happened and try to help Luke is to send a Mars 2 mission to him. At that moment, Phil realizes that the Saturn research satellite is passing through Mars' orbit and can be reprogrammed to explore. Commander Ray points out that a launch isn’t possible until eight months later, Jim reveals he has a plan: he's already done the calculations and figured out that they can fly out sooner by reducing the ship's load and taking more fuel.
Ray doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but Jay proves that it’ll work because he was the one who developed the evacuation plan for the Mars mission, and when he’s backed up by Woody, Ray gives them permission to proceed. Afterward, Woody and Ray discuss who will join the team. Woody wants Jim to be the copilot, but Ray is against it because Jim hasn’t been cleared to fly since he didn’t take the few remaining psychological tests after losing his wife.
However Woody insists until Ray approves. The Mars 2 takes off without any issues just as Jim promised, and weeks pass until they’ve been traveling for 174 days. Out of boredom, Phil makes a model of his ideal woman's DNA out of candy, which Jim ruins by eating some of it.
Now Phil thinks it must be the DNA of a frog. At that moment, Woody observes a dust storm on the screen that is heading straight for the Mars 1 expedition camp, so he tells Jim that they’ll have to speed up to move ahead of schedule or the storm will cover the whole planet for an entire year. When data from the satellite finally arrives, they discover that the Mars 1 ship is intact and in the area there are three graves, meaning Luke may still be alive.
As they scan the site for radiation levels, they see a strange interference on the screen, and Woody notices that the earthquake that happened six months ago couldn't have caused this. However Jim is sure it wasn't an earthquake. Moments later, Ray gives them permission to land, but first Jim takes a moment to remember his wife by watching old videos.
Landing on Mars had actually been her dream because she was sure there’s something unfathomable there, so now Jim intends to get those answers she wanted. With only an hour to go before the ship enters Mars orbit, the astronauts check all systems and procedures. While Phil’s entering the necessary data on the screen, suddenly a micrometeoroid cloud strikes the ship, shattering the glass and injuring Phil in the arm.
They also discover a malfunction in the primary system and that the pressure is dropping from a hole in the ship's hull. Woody quickly finds it and fixes it in seconds, but the air pressure keeps dropping, which means there are more holes in the ship and complete decompression is minutes away. Woody decides to go outside, but in such a large ship, it's almost impossible to find the damaged area.
Suddenly the crew members get an idea: they open a liquid package and let the substance float up, immediately coming out of the hole. The ship’s pressure is already getting too low and Jim feels sick to to the point of losing consciousness, but luckily Woody fixes the hole just in time and the pressure finally stabilizes. Woody wants to inspect the entire hull in case there are any scratches left, but by this point, the ship is ready to go into orbit, so Woody must hurry back.
Afterward, Phil starts the engine and turns on the fuel injection, but unfortunately Woody had been right: there’s another breach in the engine's fuel line and some of the fuel leaks into space. Still unaware of the problem, the team begins the countdown and Phil prepares to press the start button. As the engine starts, the fuel ignites and damages the ship, causing the systems not to respond to commands and the engine can’t be shut down.
Now the ship begins falling through the atmosphere, meaning it’ll burn up in three minutes. While they panic, the crew discovers that the supply module left in orbit by Mars 1 is only a kilometer away, so they suit up and go out on a spacewalk to try to reach it. Once outside, the crew discovers that the supply module isn’t where they thought it would be because it’s moving too fast, so Woody decides to use his rocketpack to fly to the module and attach a tether to it.
However the fuel quickly runs out and Woody is forced to switch to autonomous flight mode, dropping the propulsion. He’s approaching the module at great speed, but also he can't stop, which ends up with him hitting the module. At least he manages to secure the tether, however he’s unable to grab on and flies past, continuing to fall to Mars.
The autonomous system shuts down, and now there is no way he can change his flight course. The others immediately want to fly after him, but Woody stops them, as the jetpacks don't have enough power to fly there and back. Next, the rest of the crew manages to get a foothold on the module.
Terry is so desperate to save her husband that she disconnects her tether, ignoring Woody when he tries to talk her out of it. She launches her harpoon, and Woody reaches out, but unfortunately he is already too far away and the cable is half a meter short. Terry is about to fly a little closer and try again, but Woody knows that if she does that, she won't be able to return, so he tells her that he loves her before taking off his helmet, instantly dying.
Terry is on the edge of a breakdown, but Jim helps her calm down. At that moment, the space station stops receiving signals from Mars 2, and the staff thinks the crew hasn’t survived. But suddenly they receive data that the supply module in orbit has landed on Mars, and Ray realizes that only Jim is capable of such a thing.
Moments later, the remaining crew finally arrives on Mars. After retrieving the previous team's national flag, they go looking for the first expedition ship, taking with them new motherboards to install in place of the burned ones. They quickly find the ship and begin exploring it for clues.
Jim goes into the greenhouse and notices that someone has clearly been here all this time because all the instruments are on and the plants are brightly alive. Suddenly, he is attacked by someone behind him: it turns out to be Luke, who thinks Jim is just a hallucination and wants to get rid of it. Jim makes him snap out of it by talking to him about his family, retelling old memories that help calm Luke down.
Once he’s come back to his senses, Luke cries with happiness when he realizes his friends are here to rescue him, but the mood gets awkward when they tell him about Woody. Then the team asks Luke what happened, but he only repeats that something burst from the top of the mountain and obliterated everyone. Luke believes that he survived for a reason, almost as if he had been chosen, and now he is the one who must solve the mystery.
Afterward, Luke takes the crew to see the burial sites. At that moment, Jim notices a huge storm in the distance that is about to cover the entire planet, and Luke explains it has been here for a long time and that it originated from the mysterious mountain. The astronauts have no choice but to return to the ship, and Luke tries to explain exactly the mystery he has to solve.
Since millions of years have passed, during which there have been meteor falls, sandstorms, and lava flows, the surface of the planet has changed, and they just couldn't see it. Luke turns on the computer and shows them the mountain in the shape of a face while turning on the sound they heard the first time, which he considers to be the key behind this. While waiting to be rescued, Luke figures out that the strange sounds are a repeating set of mathematical symbols and correlates the groups of sounds with a coordinate system, which reveals a model of DNA.
Luke thinks that it is a portrait of the creature who created the face, which is not quite human because the model is missing the last pair of chromosomes. However they still don't understand what this means. Afterward, the team sorts through their supplies and Jim accidentally spills Phil's candy, which reminds him of how they fooled around with the DNA model.
This makes him realize that the sounds the face makes and the DNA model that is derived from the sounds isn’t a portrait, it's a test, and the face is waiting for an answer to a question. The astronauts on the first mission failed because they didn’t add the missing pair of chromosomes to prove they were human, instead they pointed the radar and it was interpreted as the wrong answer so the face became defensive. Now it's up to them to find the right answer, so Jim offers to find out which tones correspond to the missing chromosomes.
He wants to record the resulting sound, but Phil and Terry have doubts because if they make a mistake, they’ll die like the first crew. However Jim changes their minds by pointing out that if they leave without finding out, it means their friends have given their lives in vain. At least Luke comes up with an idea: they will stay away from the face, and the recording will be sent along with the remote-controlled camera.
The team travels to the mountain and plays the sound source as close to the Martian face as possible. Once the augmented DNA signal ends, they are shocked to see an entrance appearing in the face with a blinding white light coming out of it. The astronauts assume it is some sort of invitation, so Jim, Terry, and Luke go to the face while Phil stays on the ship with orders to leave at the appointed time even if they don't return.
When the astronauts enter the white-walled room, the entrance closes behind them and communication with Phil is cut off, meaning they are trapped. Noticing something on his glove, Jim takes it off and confirms here there is an Earth-like atmosphere, so the astronauts carefully remove their helmets, surprised by being able to breathe. Suddenly, an airlock opens behind them, and the team walks inside to find a dark room with a huge three-dimensional projection of the solar system.
Soon a hologram of a Martian appears, revealing to the astronauts the secret of the origin of life on Earth. In the distant past, Mars was just like Earth, but a giant asteroid hit it and destroyed its entire ecosystem. The Martians went to another galaxy, but one ship was sent to Earth with their Martian DNA, which evolved to form life on our planet.
This means it was the Martians who gave life to all mankind. After finishing watching the story, Jim, Luke, Terry, and the Martian hologram hold hands around a projection of Earth, which suddenly disappears and a white circle appears in its place before the Martian goes away too. At that moment, communication with Phil is restored, and he reports that the storm is intensifying so it could soon overwhelm the ship.
The team realizes that a ship will also fly out of the Face and the countdown has already begun, so they need to hurry. Terry and Luke rush to the exit, but Jim refuses to leave. This truly is all an invitation, so he will go on to explore space in the Martian ship like his wife would’ve wanted.
Luke and Terry respect his decision and say a final goodbye to him before rushing outside, where the storm is about to overtake their ship and is blocking communications again. Phil feels frustrated and waits for as long as possible, but when he gets no answer from his friends, he gets ready to take off. However Luke and Terry manage to cross the storm and arrive at the ship at the last second, so the trio is able to leave safely together.
Meanwhile Jim steps into the white circle and finds himself in a transparent capsule, which rises extremely fast into the Martian spaceship. He can’t help panicking when the capsule starts filling with water, but soon he realizes can breathe in there. At that moment, all of the best moments of his life flash before his eyes, leaving him incredibly happy and ready for this new journey.
Then the entire Martian face turns into a pillar of fire through which the ship carrying Jim rises, taking him into infinity and beyond. This is seen by the rest of the crew from their ship, who wish Jim the best.
