Approaching the Unknown is a 2016 American science fiction drama film written and directed by Mark Elijah Rosenberg in his feature debut.

It stars Mark Strong in the lead role of Captain William Stanaforth, the first person on a lone mission to Mars.

Captain William Stanaforth is on a one-way solo mission to Mars, taking humanity’s first steps towards colonizing it.

After liftoff and the subsequent rocket separations, Stanaforth takes his suit off to relax and is set on course to Mars for 270 days by the team on the ground.

Through flashbacks we see how Stanaforth had come up with the idea to create water (H2O) by supercompressing sand/dirt and combining the separate hydrogen and oxygen byproducts.