Here's What Happens To The Astronauts In Away At The End Of Their Fateful Mars Mission

Spoilers for the Away Season 1 finale. Netflix's new space drama Away follows Commander Emma Green (Hilary Swank) as she leads a team of astronauts on the first-ever mission to Mars. In the opening episode, she promises her family that she'll come home alive despite the dangerous journey that awaits her. But viewers don't get to see that happy reunion. The season ends with the Away astronauts only just landing on Mars, and they barely make it there as is.

Across the first eight months of their three-year trek, Emma and her international crew escape near-death on more than one occasion. Early on in the mission, Emma and Misha (Mark Ivanir) take a dangerous walk into space to fix something on the rocket's hull; the astronauts deal with a potentially deadly virus when Ram (Ray Panthaki) falls ill mid-trip; and at one point, their entire water system fails, leaving them at risk of dying from dehydration. But perhaps worse than death for the crew, they almost have to turn back when their refuel rocket Pegasus loses contact with NASA. The team on the ground worries that the ship blew up in space, decimating the supplies on board and making sustained living on Mars impossible. But after a tense landing, the Atlas crew learns that Pegasus ended up making it OK despite the communication malfunction.

It's in the last few moments of Season 1 that the astronauts finally get to walk on the red soil of Mars. But it's a three year mission, so presumably they'll be spending a little over a year on the surface of the planet before making an eight month journey back to Earth. That's fodder for at least two more seasons before fans find out if Emma makes good on her promise to safely return back home.