Things may not be as they seem...

With Damon Lindelof on board, this could go into INCEPTION or MATRIX territories. Fragmented realities & psychological states etc. But Fox is on the roll with science fiction, AVATAR made $2 billion bucks, the new APES movie made $400 million worldwide: the execs want a traditional scfi action movie. But I would love somebody take the science fiction alien genre and turn it into something else. I read a script sometime ago, too bad I couldn't remember the origin, about a space crew which travels from planet to planet only to gradually realize that those planets they visit are Earth at different time of its natural history. They are stuck in a time loop. Now, Lindelof could do something insane with the ALIEN series, but I don't think Fox would allow him to go that far into time travel sub-genre.

Based on early set photos I saw last year (and haven't been able to find online since then) I am pretty sure we see young Guy Pearce on the mission. I've seen him in a spacesuit without any sort of age makeup. This is probably the big secret which would explain why those set photos got meticulously scoured from the web.