Operation Ganymed (1977)

In 1991, the surviving astronauts of a years-long international UN “peace mission” return to Earth, only to discover that no one is responding to their radio signals. Their spacecraft, Ganymede II, was one of three ships on the Jupiter mission. Two burned up in Jupiter’s atmosphere during a faulty swing-by maneuver, and the remaining ship lost part of its crew during a descent to a crater lake on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede that had not been authorized by the commander. Nevertheless, the crew managed to discover primitive life there and collect samples. The last survivors—three Americans, a Western European, and a Russian—are approaching Earth orbit after more than 1,500 days in space. The crew tries to reestablish contact with mission control, which had been lost more than two and a half years earlier. This is because the UN had officially declared the mission a failure several years before, so no one expects any survivors. With their energy and oxygen supplies nearly depleted, Commander Mac decides to make an emergency landing by deliberately jettisoning the command capsule; the main section of the spacecraft remains in orbit. The landing capsule does splash down in the sea, but the life raft is washed ashore on a deserted coast, beyond which lies a desert-like lunar landscape. With only their emergency rations and almost no drinking water, the astronauts set out in search of an inhabited area. Their arduous trek eventually brings them to an abandoned settlement, where, using maps and newspapers left behind, they determine that they are on the west coast of Baja California. The other four astronauts also discover that Don has in fact been carrying samples from the crater lake in what he claimed was his “medicine bag,” and they beat him. In the end, they decide to continue toward the road to San Diego, but it turns out to be buried in sand and apparently abandoned. When they find the wreck of an airplane that has also been left behind, Oss begins to suspect that humanity may have been decimated by a nuclear war and that they are heading toward the area where the radioactive fallout came down. Doug, an American already on edge from the years they spent together and the many bad experiences during the mission and since landing, is driven mad by the heat and lack of water. He beats the Russian, Oss, to death, believing in his delirium that only the Russians could have started the nuclear war. Commander Mac then shoots Doug. Already at the end of his strength, Mac fires the last remaining flare that night as a desperate signal of hope. The next morning, he stumbles upon the exobiologist Don, who is sleeping a little way from camp, tormented by visions of nuclear war, and drags him back to the airplane wreck, where Steve had stayed with the last supplies of water. In the meantime, Steve has become a cannibal from hunger and has violated the bodies of those who were killed earlier. When Mac and Don return, Steve flees in fear and shame, and the next morning they find him dead in the desert. Mac and Don struggle onward until Mac dies of exhaustion. The final scene shows the sole survivor of the entire mission: Don, already badly affected by dehydration and hallucinations, stumbles with his last strength into the outskirts of a Mexican slum. It remains unclear whether his perception is still intact; apparently, he left the crater-lake samples he had carried for so long somewhere in the desert.