1975. A new Apollo mission launches into orbit, on course to dock with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft: three NASA astronauts and three cosmonauts, joining to celebrate a new dawn of Soviet-American cooperation. But a third power is rising, in the race to dominate Space. As NASA Flight Controller Kaz Zemeckis listens in from Earth, three of the six astronauts are killed in an unexplained accident. And from a remote location in east Asia, a capsule secretly launches with China's very first astronaut aboard, purpose unknown.