On board is Commander Marshall Donnington, Pilot Lee Tahon, and Flight Engineer Victoria Preston.
However, during their orbital insertion, a sudden and unpredicted solar flare erupts from the sun and hits Mercury and starts to magnetize and tear the planet apart.
Their ship Nautilus manages to escape danger at the beginning of the event but then is caught in it when the engines fail.
Meanwhile, in a university auditorium on Earth, scientist James Preston explains how unpredictable asteroids, solar flares, and comets are.
Meanwhile, Nautilus is shown drifting in space with low oxygen levels and damaged navigation and communication systems.
Marshall and Victoria both survived the event, but Lee did not; they find his body covered with severe burns.
Victoria manages to fix the communication and make contact with a pirate radio station owned by two seniors at North Bay University in Oregon.
Later, Brooke and Christopher regain contact with Nautilus and want them to go to mission ops, but it is in Houston, so they go to Sphere, south of Seattle.
When the guards at Sphere don't believe Christopher and Brooke, Victoria sends them to Preston's house in Pacific Grove.
While Victoria is headed back to Earth, Preston asks her to tether Project Seven to the front of Mercury to change its vector.