The X-Files/Recap/S01/E09 Space

In 1977, after the discovery of a face sculpted into the landscape of Mars, Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt (Ed Lauter), an astronaut, is plagued by flashbacks of an encounter with the disembodied face during a spacewalk. Sixteen years later, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are approached by Michelle Generoo (Susanna Thompson), a communications commander for NASA's Mission Control. Generoo believes that someone within NASA is sabotaging launch attempts. A recent space shuttle liftoff was aborted seconds before commencement, and Generoo fears the next launch will be similarly compromised. She also has a personal interest, as her fiancé will be aboard the next mission.

Mulder and Scully travel to NASA and meet Belt, a childhood hero of Mulder's. Belt, who now manages the shuttle program, dismisses the agents' concerns and states that nothing can possibly go wrong with the mission. He allows the agents to watch the successful launch from Mission Control. As the agents are leaving, however, Generoo informs them that contact is lost with the shuttle in orbit. While driving back to Mission Control, she sees the face come at her through her windshield, causing her to crash her car. The agents manage to get her out of her overturned car and, despite being injured, she manages to get back to the base.

The shuttle has moved into direct sunlight and Mission Control is unable to rotate it into a safe position, putting the astronauts' lives in danger. Generoo believes that the uplink is being sabotaged. Belt orders the uplink to be cut, allowing the astronauts to rotate the craft manually. Over the objections of Generoo and the agents, he orders the mission to proceed and lies to the press about its progress. Belt tells Mulder that the shuttle program may be cancelled if the mission is not completed successfully.

Belt returns home and has another flashback. As he lies in bed in agony, an astral presence leaves his body and flies out the window, heading into the sky. The astronauts then report hearing a thump outside the shuttle and begin to experience an oxygen leak. Belt fixes the situation, but orders the mission to proceed. The payload is successfully deployed, but a crew member reports seeing a ghostlike entity outside the ship. Meanwhile, the agents examine NASA records and find evidence that Belt played a role in other failed missions, including the Challenger disaster.

Belt behaves irrationally and collapses screaming as he hears mention of the entity from the astronauts. Paramedics are called to attend to him, and find him cowering under his desk whimpering and begging for help. Before Belt is taken away, he tells the agents that the shuttle will not survive reentry due to sabotage by "the face", which has possessed his body since the spacewalk. At his urging, they alert the shuttle to change its trajectory and are just able to land it successfully.

In the hospital, Belt continues to wrestle with the presence, telling Mulder he wasn't responsible but also couldn't stop it, as "it came to me, it lives in me". Eventually, in a last wrestle with the re-possessing entity, he leaps from the window to his death - experiencing a lengthy flashback to his last space mission as he falls. At his funeral, Mulder theorizes that, while Belt was compelled to sabotage the launches by the entity possessing him, he was also the one who sent Generoo the evidence of what was taking place. He lauds Belt's final sacrifice, stating that in the end he gave his life for the mission, as befits a true astronaut.


 * Hey, It's That Guy!: maybe the reason they keep having trouble with the shuttles is because their chief scientist is Col. Maybourne.
 * Reentry Scare