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Sunshine
In 2057, the Sun is dying and Earth is freezing. Eight astronauts aboard the starship Icarus II are sent on a last-chance mission to deliver and detonate a colossal stellar bomb intended to reignite the Sun. As the ship passes Mercury, it receives a distress beacon from Icarus I, the earlier mission that had disappeared seven years prior. Despite engineer Mace's objections, Captain Kaneda, acting on a recommendation from physicist Capa, decides to divert course in order to investigate and also to double the mission's success potential should the identical stellar bomb payload on the original ship prove operational as backup.
Navigator Trey plots the new route but inadvertently overlooks realigning the ship's heat shields, damaging reflective panels that protect Icarus II from direct sunlight. Pilot Cassie angles the vessel into Mercury's shadow while Kaneda and Capa perform a spacewalk to repair the shield. The operation destroys two of the ship's communications towers, and reflected light incinerates the oxygen garden, reducing air reserves. When the emergency autopilot forces the ship back into its original alignment, Kaneda orders Capa to retreat and completes the final repair himself, moments before a wave of sunlight engulfs and kills him. Trey blames himself for losing Kaneda, and psychologist Searle sedates him after judging him a suicide risk.
Now lacking sufficient oxygen to reach the Sun and deploy the bomb, Icarus II docks with Icarus I to salvage resources. Capa, Searle, Mace and communications officer Harvey board the derelict ship while Cassie and biologist Corazon remain on Icarus II with Trey. Although Icarus I appears largely operational, its mainframe has been sabotaged, preventing payload delivery. Mace finds a damaged entry log from Captain Pinbacker, badly burned and insisting their mission defies God, dated to roughly six and a half years earlier. On the observation deck, Searle discovers the charred bodies of the Icarus I crew, who were apparently exposed to unfiltered solar radiation.
An explosive decoupling separates the ships and destroys Icarus I' s outer airlock, stranding the boarding team. With only one intact spacesuit and limited insulation, they decide that Capa, despite Harvey's protests, must take the suit because he is the only crew member able to arm the bomb. Searle stays behind to open the airlock, allowing the others to jettison back toward Icarus II using insulation for protection. Harvey misses the airlock and freezes to death, while Capa and Mace make it back. Left alone on Icarus I, Searle returns to the observation deck and exposes himself to unfiltered sunlight, killing himself.
Back aboard Icarus II, Corazon calculates that the remaining oxygen will only sustain four people to the Sun. In order to preserve oxygen, the crew votes to have Mace kill Trey, but Trey has already committed suicide. Although the mission now seems possible, the ship's systems still detect five life signs. Capa investigates and finds Pinbacker alive now aboard Icarus II, having boarded during the docking and caused the decoupling. Pinbacker attacks Capa, traps him in an airlock, disables the ship by lifting its mainframes from coolant baths, and kills Corazon. Mace attempts to manually reset the mainframes, and succeeds with two, but the third crushes his leg and traps him in the coolant; freezing, he urges Capa to finish the mission.
Capa pierces an interior hatch with a blowtorch and opens an exterior airlock so decompression tears away the obstruction and frees him, allowing him to deploy the payload. The bomb structure separates from Icarus II, and Capa makes a leap towards the payload as the ship is destroyed by solar radiation. Inside the payload, he finds a wounded Cassie, but Pinbacker confronts them again, claiming he has spent years "speaking to God," and subdues Capa; Cassie pulls Capa away, and he tears burned skin from Pinbacker's arm. As the bomb's gravity shifts, Capa reaches the controls and detonates the payload; in his final moments, spacetime distorts and he reaches out to the Sun's surface as it reignites.
On Earth, Capa's sister and her children build snowmen on a frozen Sydney Harbour. As they listen to Capa's final transmission, the sun brightens and sunlight begins to shine down on them.