2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) is a United States-produced science fiction film written, shot and directed by Peter Hyams. Acting as a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s famous 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and based on Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2010: Odyssey Two (published in 1982), the movie follows a joint American-Soviet team sent to Jupiter to uncover the reason for the failure of the previous Discovery One mission. In this timeline, nine years have passed since the five crew members, including mission leader David Bowman, vanished during the failed expedition in 2001. As tensions arise between the US and Soviet Union due to an international dispute, both countries launch their own space missions to investigate what went wrong with the Discovery. While the Soviet spacecraft Leonov will be ready a year before its American counterpart Discovery Two, it is only the Americans who possess the ability to reactivate HAL 9000 – the ship’s sentient computer that is believed to be responsible for the disaster.

After discovering that Discovery’s collision with Jupiter’s moon Io will occur before their own American mission can reach it, NASA convinces the Soviets to bring along key members Dr. Heywood Floyd, Walter Curnow (designer of Discovery), and Dr. Chandra (creator of HAL 9000) on their upcoming journey. Once they arrive at Jupiter, the crew makes a significant finding: traces of chlorophyll on Europa, one of Jupiter’s icy moons that appears to be moving closer to the sun at a rate of one meter every minute. However, when a probe is sent out to investigate, it is abruptly destroyed by a sudden burst of energy. While the Soviets believe this could be due to electrostatic build-up, Floyd has his suspicions that it may actually be a warning signal from the unknown entity residing on Europa.