In the year 2030, the race to be the first to reach the Red Planet is on - and China is leading the way. China has stunned the world by leapfrogging over America's long-term plans and has landed a series of advanced rovers and robotic landers in their quest to make the most important discovery in history - extraterrestrial life. Once again, America and its partners, including Canada, are thrust into a winner-take-all space race - but this time the stakes are even higher than the race to the Moon nearly seven decades earlier.

The international team accelerates its plans to launch a human mission, drawing together astronauts from Canada, the United States, Russia, France and Japan for a gruelling assignment. In a capsule the size of just two school buses, these four men and two women must work together as a team and struggle with the sacrifice of leaving friends and family behind. This elite crew - after years of training and psychological evaluations - band together for the ultimate career-making mission. This journey will last for nearly 600 days and will take them 56-million kilometres away from their lives on Earth - and the physical and psychological isolation they experience will be unlike anything these astronauts have ever known.

This mission asks for extraordinary human sacrifice, but the payoff - being the first to discover potential life on another planet - is irresistible to an astronaut with just "the right stuff." Among them, the driven mission commander who's never known failure - until he loses one of his own to the unforgiving environment on Mars; the rational flight surgeon who discovers a new spirituality as she grapples with the magnitude of her journey; the veteran cosmonaut who knows just how many rules can be broken; the brilliant French nuclear physicist; and the Canadian astronaut who will play a key role before the end of the journey. Training and determination will get them only so far, and when this crew sets out on humanity's first