Fifty years after meeting the “spirit” of Dave Bowman aboard the abandoned Discovery and witnessing the fiery transformation of Jupiter into Earth’s second sun, 103-year-old Dr. Heywood Floyd boards the luxury spaceship Universe for the historic first landing on the surface of Halley’s Comet.
At the same time, the Galaxy expedition sets out to probe the evolutionary upheaval on Jupiter’s former moon Europa — haunted by the fate of a doomed Chinese mission and by the ominous message from space: “All these worlds are yours — except Europa. Attempt no landing there.”
As the stranded Galaxy awaits rescue on the dangerous and forbidden surface of Europa and Universe races to her aid, the omniscient force that is Dave Bowman watches — and waits to reveal the extraordinary secrets of the monoliths, of the masters he now serves, and of mankind’s ultimate role in the course of cosmic history…