Maybe someone can help me understand a key element to this complex story.
He's on long range mission, kid has been asleep for a while indicating they've been in space for a while, he's on an uncharted planet indicating ain't no one been around these parts and yet a rescue mission is on the way?
Are they going to go into hibernation until the rescue ship arrives? That's the only thing I can think of.
No
shareHis mission didn't seem completely coherent. At the beginning of the movie, he was going to be gone for 2 years, which isn't generally that long for what was later described as a deep space mission. And the mission itself seemed like it was more or less a question of hauling passengers from A to B. We also didn't get much explanation about where Adam Driver lived or was from -- was he living on a colony at the edge of his civilization or closer to the center of it?
My best guess is that Driver and his family lived near the edge of their civilization's colonized space but that there were colonies further out. His mission was to deliver colonists to some further out colony and then return (although realistically, he could have been on the return leg with colonists returning).
So while the Sol system wasn't charted -- or was poorly charted, he was traveling in a region of space roughly "between" outposts which meant between the escape ship and whatever was launched as a rescue mission wasn't some unreasonable distance.