In a future where two rival superpowers race each other to reach Mars, one nation's secret rocket runs into trouble in a meteor storm and must be rescued by its rival's own crew, who in doing so use up too much of their own fuel to complete the journey. Stranded and forced to improvise increasingly desperate rescue missions, the astronauts sacrifice everything just to make it home, having laid the groundwork for the space race still to come. (An American recut, produced by Roger Corman, of a Soviet science-fiction film, reworked with new footage including early stop-motion creature effects by a young Francis Ford Coppola.)