The crew discovers a long-dead Venusian civilization that had constructed a device intended to destroy all life on Earth prior to invasion.

In 1985, engineers involved in an industrial project to irrigate the Gobi Desert accidentally unearth a mysterious and apparently artificial "spool".

The spool itself is determined to be a flight recorder and is partially decoded by an international team of scientists led by Professor Sikarna and Dr. Tschen Yü.

By then, Sikarna's efforts lead to a stunning discovery: The spool describes a Venusian plan to irradiate the Earth's surface, with the extermination of mankind being the prelude to their invasion.

Harringway, however, convinces the crew to press on towards Venus rather than return to Earth with revelations that could panic mankind, leading to unknown consequences.

With the ship's robot, Omega, German astronaut Brinkman pilots a one-man landing craft through the Venusian atmosphere.

Following the power lines in the other direction, they find the remains of a deserted and blasted city centered around a huge crater.

There are clear signs of a catastrophic explosion so intense that the shadowy forms of the humanoid Venusians are permanently burned onto the walls of the surviving structures.

Brinkmann is also repelled off-planet, beyond the reach of the spaceship to save him, while Talua and Tschen Yü remain marooned on the devastated Venus.

[7] The Astronauts was likely chosen due to the recent advancements in rocket technology and the popularity of space travel in science fiction.

The DEFA director Herbert Volkmann, responsible for finance, as well as other officials of the GDR, were strict with the project: they had ideological concerns about the script, and new writers were brought in to work on it.

[13] Cox also remarked that Silent Star's images of melted cities and crystallised forests, overhung by swirling clouds of gas, are masterpieces of production design.

The scene in which three cosmonauts are menaced halfway up a miniature Tower of Babel by an encroaching sea of sludge may not entirely convince, but it is still a heck of a thing to see".

[13] Stanislaw Lem, whose novel the film was based upon, was extremely critical of the adaptation and even wanted his name removed from the credits in protest against the extra politicization of the storyline when compared to his original.

Two differently cut and dubbed versions of the film were also shown on the American market at the time, Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply and Planet of the Dead.