Dateline 3208.301
The Imperial Secretariat today published full details of the findings from Operation Boldly Go. The mission, which took almost five years, found evidence of an active and technologically advanced alien civilisation.
Operation Boldly Go was a pan-human operation to explore the centre of the universe and in particular to find the source of some transmissions detected on an earlier journey in that direction. The joint mission to investigate possible alien transmissions originating some some 2HY (around 2,500 lightyears) away was despatched on new years day 3203.
In total 21 populated systems were discovered and investigated, all with apparently the same civilisation (or at least off-shoots of the same original civilisation).
The aliens (or the equipment) found at each world was pretty much identical, though there appear to be minor visual differences between individuals. From observations it was found that the planets have very few obvious settlements like cities - but they do have industry on what appears to be a fairly small scale. Of course this might also be large scale industry using technologies we do not understand and with a tiny environmental footprint.
The aliens have some sort of burnless or gravitic interplanetary drive system unknown to us. This makes their ships nearly completely undetectable by human technology. Their ships are of all sizes and their interstellar ships are huge - and capable of landing on a planet using whatever exotic drive system they use.
The aliens have some sort of symbolic language that might be translatable - our teams are working on it.
Full details are available at: http://www.full-moon.info/doku.php/universe/boldlygo
[OOC: this is all the mission reports supplied by JIM]
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