I had never been so glued to a movie screen in my life.
A shot of the Envoy I—or rather, another CGI simulation—appeared on the screen, showing the probe as it maneuvered into orbit around Europa, with majestic Jupiter looming behind it. It looked like a larger, less streamlined version of the two Voyager spacecraft NASA launched the following year, with giant fuel tanks and a lander cobbled onto its frame.
As the spacecraft passed over the huge black symbol, the orbiter deployed its landing module and it began to descend toward the frozen surface.
The image cut to what appeared to be actual video footage shot by the Envoy lander’s on-board camera during its final approach.
Seen directly from above and in full sunlight, the giant swastika on Europa’s surface appeared to consist of nothing more than long bands of discolored ice. The blackened sections of ice still reflected sunlight, and aside from the change in its color, there appeared to be no disruption in the pattern of striated cracks and frozen ridges covering the moon’s surface. It looked like someone had slapped the solar system’s largest swastika stencil on the side of Europa and then hit it with a Star Destroyer–sized can of black acrylic spray paint.
“The Envoy lander set down near the southernmost tip of the anomaly, near what would later become known as the Thera Macula region,” Sagan’s voice-over continued, just as the lander completed its controlled descent and touched down on the surface, with its landing gear straddling the border between the swastika’s edge and the unblemished ice beside it.
To my shock, a familiar gold disc was attached to the base of the lander. It looked identical to the famous gold records NASA had attached to both of its Voyager spacecraft.
“A twelve-inch gold-plated copper disk was attached to the Envoy lander,” Sagan explained. “This phonograph record was encoded with sound recordings and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, to serve as a token of peace from our species.”
After the lander finished unfolding its solar panel array, a jointed robotic arm extended from its underside and began to collect a sample of the blackened surface. The heated metal scoop at the end of the arm dug a furrow into the ice about a foot deep, revealing that it was black at that depth, too. Once the arm retracted, the body of the lander opened up like a metal flower, revealing a torpedo-shaped probe within, with its nose pointed straight down at the ice.
“The heat generated by Jupiter’s tidal flexing of Europa causes most of the moon’s subsurface ice to remain liquid, resulting in a subterranean ocean that we knew could possibly harbor life, which made it the first logical place for us to search for the beings responsible for creating the symbol on the moon’s surface.”
I once again marveled at the powerfully calming effect of Sagan’s voice. If James Earl Jones had been chosen to narrate this briefing film, it would have been even more terrifying to watch.
“Shortly after it touched down, the Envoy lander deployed a cryobot, an experimental nuclear-powered melt probe designed to burn down through the moon’s surface ice and explore the ocean hidden beneath it for signs of extraterrestrial life.”
The lander slowly lowered the torpedo-shaped cryobot, pressing its superheated nose down into the blackened ice. An explosive column of steam shot up high into Europa’s nearly nonexistent atmosphere as the probe began to melt through the onyx surface, burning a perfect cylindrical tunnel through the ice as it descended, pulled downward by gravity.
In a few seconds, the tail of the cryobot disappeared beneath the surface, unspooling a long fiber-optic tether behind it that would keep it connected to the lander and its transmitter. Then a cutaway animation of Europa appeared on the screen, showing the cryobot’s progress as it burrowed down through several kilometers of solid ice before it finally made it all the way through the crust and then plunged into Europa’s dark ocean.
“We lost contact with the cryobot just a few seconds after it cleared the underside of the moon’s ice layer. At first, NASA suspected an equipment malfunction, because we also lost contact with the lander up on the surface at the same moment. But when the Envoy orbiter passed over the landing site again a few hours later, the satellite images it sent back revealed two things: The lander had completely vanished from the surface, and so had the swastika.”