HELP! Trying to track down a film

This is pretty random but I thought I'd give it a go.

From my major project I’ve been doing some research into time travel and interstellar travel and its led me onto wormholes.

I watched a film probably a good few years ago and I can remember a scene in the film where there was some huge machine that dropped a metallic sphere (with an astronaut in) through some kind of energy field or wormhole in order to try and travel to some other universe or something.

I remember that in the main character (think she was a blond lady) was someone working at an observatory or satellite centre or something like that and they intercepted strange noises or something from space or somehow got video footage beamed back to them (possibly with Hitler in it) or something like that and it was interlaced with instructions on how to build a machine to travel through the time space continuum or something.

Then in the film the Americans build one of these machines and while it was being used some like religious fanatic sabotaged it destroying it and killing the astronaut who was to travel in it. Then it turned out the Chinese had built one to and the main character then goes to china to pilot this machine.

I can remember the machine being like a huge thing with a spherical energy field then an arm like a crane drops a spherical ball (with the pilot or astronaut or whoever inside) into the energy field which is supposed to transport it to another universe or something.

When they drop the sphere through the energy field the main character is transported to another world where she appears on like a beach which is in a purple twilight with a few moons etc and an alien appears to her in the form of her dead mother or father or something?

Then she is sent back and everyone thinks the space travel failed as the sphere just dropped straight through the energy field and out the bottom.

That’s about all I can remember
If anyone had any idea what the film can they let me know

Thanks in advance

JAG