Mulder's boyhood dream is fulfilled when he gets to visit mission control at NASA. It's not just any excursion though as Mulder and Scully must find out who sabotaged a rocket seconds before lift off. Luckily for Mulder, the culprit is just a bit too un-earthly.

It seems that Colonel Aurelius Belt (a former astronaut) is seeing visions of the unearthly face found on the surface of Mars some time ago. A communication specialist is also seeing this vision which leads to her crashing of her car. M & S are not sure what is really going on, it just seems a case of space shuttle sabotage by terrorists. Nothing for The X Files department to get involved in.

But when Colonel Belt starts going crazy, his face starts forming into the alien face watched by Mulder and Scully. This leads them to believe that Belt must have encountered something while he was in space, something not from this world.

This is found to be true when the two agents realize that Belt must have been possessed by some sort of alien ghost which now seems to have left the colonel's body and flown back into space where it is wandering around the shuttle of the current exploration. This confirmed with the message from the shuttle "There's something attacking the ship. Oh my god....it's some kind of ghost!".

M & S find that the alien body is controlling the colonel to sabotage the space mission which they do succeed in bringing down to Earth safely. But the final scene shows how the exploration of space led Colonel Belt to escape the thing he encountered out there...whatever it was..........