Joan Goodwin has been looking up at the stars for as long as she can remember. As a professor of astrophysics, she has turned her passion into a profession, and she is happy when she can explain the constellations to her niece in the open air in the evening. In 1980, she dared to take the step of her life: she was one of the first women to apply for NASA's space shuttle program. With a group of highly qualified pilots, commanders and engineers, she begins intensive preparations for her first flight into space. As she gets closer and closer to her dream of the stars, something happens that Joan would not have expected: she meets the love of her life. All of a sudden, she questions everything she believed about her place in the universe.