Who gets to be the hero?

Jamison: Do you remember that movie that came out a few years back... District 9 I think?

Keller: Yeah, what about it?

Jamison: Well, in that movie, an alien spaceship appeared to run out of resources and sort of, parked on Earth. But what if those aliens hadn't been so lucky to make it to Earth?

Keller: Is this just another hypothetical thing? C'mon, you have to have something better to do with your time.

Jamison: No no, not entirely... Just think about it. We have 8 planets in our solar system and 5 dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt. And off the top of my head I don't even know the number of moons those planets have. What would you think if an alien ship got stranded on say, one of Saturn's moons?

Keller: If they ran out of resources getting to our solar system, then they probably wouldn't go to Saturn.

Jamison: But Saturn is a fairly large planet and if the ship that was traveling lost speed, it might have been pulled into its orbit, and then subsequently pulled into the orbit of one of its many satellites.

Keller: So what? Are you saying we scour every moon of every planet looking for crashed spaceships?

Jamison: Sort of... What I'm saying is that there might be a sign or something telling us to look somewhere.

Keller: Like a distress beacon or something?

Jamison: Yes. Something like a distress beacon, but something we might detect... Periodic discharges of particles into space.

Keller: Why wouldn't they just use a radio or something?

Jamison: They might not use radios where they're from. They could use some method of communication that we are not familiar with, or that we are not currently pointing in Saturn's direction.

Keller: Are you proposing that there's an alien spacecraft on a moon of Saturn?

Jamison: I'm proposing that there's a distress call that's been taking place on Enceladus for possibly 400 years.

Keller: So an alien ship has been trapped on Saturn, pardon, Saturn's moon for 400 years and they're still sending out this distress signal?

Jamison: Yes. It's likely that they managed to harness some small amount of energy from the geologic events to shoot water through the frozen surface and into space.

Keller: Why wouldn't they just harness that energy and use it to get off the planet.

Jamison: I don't know. I think maybe their vessel is beyond repair or requires a component not available on Enceladus.

Keller: So they can jery-rig geysers into blasting ice into space, but they can't blast their ship back into space?

Jamison: It might be a moot point. Maybe they didn't want their ship to be subject to Saturn's gravitational pull. It's likely that their craft might be fragile or difficult to find on a planet the size of Saturn.

Keller: So these aliens, are blasting water into space so that someone, we can find them?

Jamison: That's what I think.

Keller: And why do you say that?

Jamison: The ring of particles around Saturn isn't consistent. Enceladus is periodically shooting ice into orbit and then collecting it within a few days. Most of the ice is just scooped back up and falls back to the surface. Only particularly violent eruptions send ice far enough into orbit to remain there for decades at a time. Like most Satellites, Enceladus has a slightly elliptical orbit, and these most violent eruptions occur at the apex once every 20 rotations. The power of the eruptions that are taking place would have severely depleted the mass on the Southern pole of Enceladus had the eruptions been more frequent or consistent for more than ten thousand years. Something is causing those eruptions to take place at the specific rate, regulating it, and waiting until enough ice has recollected on the surface, and it hasn't been going on for very long.

Keller: A compelling point, but isn't it possible that these events could be taking place naturally?

Jamison: It is. It's always possible that it could be a coincidence, but in the event that it's not, which we have sufficient evidence to believe otherwise, we need to get up close and examine this event.

Keller: You want to prioritize the TSSM over EJSM.

Jamison: We need to get a lander out there quickly. We can't wait another 15 years to launch it. It takes 7 years to get out there. Who knows how long it'll be before we can bring something back? It could take another 50 years to put something together that would be capable of excavating and recovering an alien craft.

Keller: Well you can put together a presentation, and I can get you a meeting, but I can't promise you they won't laugh you out of the place.


75 years later, the Jamison-Callister project was commissioned, and 70 well-preserved alien bodies were discovered on the surface of Enceladus.