SPACE

                       The failure of the Hubble Telescope and Mars Observer are directly connected to the                             conspiracy to deny us evidence of alien abduction

This episode opens in 1977 at the Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the receiving of images from the Viking spacecraft of the planet Mars, which have created quite a stir. The images brought surprising geological information  including the presence of water locked in the polar ice caps, water that could have sustained life, and one image of a land formation that looks like a sculpted human face. Of course the American Space Agency NASA officially deny any evidence of alien civilisation, with Lt. Colonel Marcus Aureliius Belt, the Project Director, suggesting it was a geological anomolie. We then follow Colonel Belt back home and lying on his bed...and then he sees a face above him that looks remarkably like the 'geological anomolie on Mars,' except this face appears to be very much alive and moving towards Belt.....

We then switch to present day and images of a shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral. Back at Houston, mission control, the countdown to lift off begins...yet at T-3 lift off is aborted due to a systems failure.

2 weeks later we are now with Federal Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, and it seems that Mulder has come into possession of a letter sent from someone at NASA. The agents meet the sender of the letter - Michelle Generoo - who works at space control. She tells the agents that she has reason to believe that a saboteur is working within the NASA agency, and that two weeks previous a lift off was aborted due to an auxiliary power valve malfunction. However she adds that the evidence available may suggest tampering, but it would be impossible for anyone to tamper in this way without being detected - and she wants the FBI to investigate. This matter is of course complicated by the fact that a launch is planned tomorrow.

The following day Mulder and Scully make their way to mission control in Houston, and amongst others talk to Colonel Belt, who maintains that there was no evidence to suggest sabotage and that the planned launch would go ahead. The rocket does launch successfully and the Agents leave, only to be tracked down later by Michelle, who tells them that something had gone wrong with the Shuttle and that communications had been lost. Mulder and Scully decide to return to Houston and follow Michelle in her car - however she crashes after seeing the same vision experienced by Belt earlier in the episode. She survives the car crash and accompanies the agents to mission control. They then learn that further problems are being experienced by the shuttle crew, the most serious being their inability to rotate the shuttle away from the sun - which could result in a burn up. Whilst Michelle wants to bring the astronauts back to earth Belt has the final decision, and is keen that the mission is a success. He makes a decision to hand control of the ship to the astronauts and it succeeds. However when Belt returns home and lies on his bed the apparition that seemed to enter his body at the start of the episode leaves his body and floats out of the window.

At the control centre there is a further problem for the shuttle, it is losing oxygen - and Mulder recalls that Colonel Belt experienced the exact same problem when he was part of a space mission. They attempt to find Belt, who has gone missing, as they need his expertise and advice. Belt arrives to tell the astronauts to deliver the payload, leaving Michelle to suggest that he is 'losing it.' Mulder accesses NASA records and concludes that Belt knew about sabotage, and as the astronauts complete their mission they report a strange image outside the ship...a ghostly apparition. Belt breaks down  and collapses in his office, shouting that 'it is out there.' Whilst experiencing some form of coronary he tells Mulder that the ship needs to change its trajectory in re-entering the atmosphere otherwise it will burn up....before he again starts shouting that 'it lives in me' and it is 'coming back.' We then see the apparition that left his body re-enter.

The shuttle touches down at Kirkland airbase successfully....however Colonel Belt jumps out of a high rise building to his death. Mulder comes to the conclusion that something must have possessed him, something he had seen in space, and that he was not responsible for his own actions. He adds that the part of Belt that was still in control must have sent evidence to Michelle - and that whatever 'it was' Belt had taken it with him.

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