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Buzzfeed Unsolved - Supernatural S3 • E6
The Eerie Disappearance of the Kerberos mission
The episode begins with the hoarse hooting of an owl in the far distance and, much closer, the echoing ringing of a church bell as animated mist drifts across the title of the show: Unsolved.
“This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved we’re going to be discussing one of the most famous space-exploration attempts in recent history: The Kerberos mission. Famous both because it attempted to send a manned mission further than ever before, all the way to Kerberos, the fourth moon of Pluto- and because of its tragic end, which is what we’ll be focusing on today.”
“Nope.” Shane shoved his chair back from the table, stood, and started walking to the door.
Ryan stared after him for a minute. “What?”
“I know where you’re going with this, and I’m not doing it.”
“I just started talking!” Ryan protested. “I’ve barely even said anything yet! You can’t possibly-“
“You’re going to say it was aliens.”
“...that may be… one of my theories, yes.”
“Right, I’m leaving.”
“Sit your ass down.”
Grumbling incomprehensibly under his breath, Shane did so. Ryan stared at him for a moment, looking thoroughly exasperated.
“Can I start now?”
Shane waved a defeated hand. “Let’s hear it.”
Ryan turned back to the camera, rolling his eyes obviously before the screen switched to the typical style of narration over shifting graphics. The first image is a photo of an advanced spacecraft, taken in some sort of hanger. Three men in Galaxy Garrison uniforms stand outside it with their arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning widely.
“The Kerberos mission was launched in 2016, and at the time it was the most ambitious space exploration mission ever launched, as well as the first manned mission to utilize the Rosen Light Engine, which would drastically reduce travel time to the outer reaches of the solar system. The mission was intended to last only six months, with a three month trip to Kerberos to test the light engine, a week’s worth of collection and testing of samples from the planetoid’s surface, and then a return trip home. The ship was manned by a small three-man crew: Pilot Takashi Shirogane, Science Officer Samuel Holt, and Junior Science Officer Matthew Holt.”
was that- were they related?
yeah, samuel was matthew’s father
man, this is why you don’t send family members together on missions like this
you’re just setting yourself up for a saving private ryan situation there
we’ll get to that, actually! there’s uh, a family member of theirs who becomes important later
ooh!
“According to both the reports logged by the ship’s computer and the electronic journals kept by the crewmen, both of which were automatically transmitted back to earth, everything was proceeding according to plan up until it was time to approach the planet. I’m now going to play the last video recording received by the Galaxy Garrison, sent the day before the ship stopped transmitting by Pilot Takashi Shirogane.”
The screen switched to a video of a Japanese man with his black hair in an undercut, looking at the camera with obvious excitement. Behind him, the vastness of space is visible through the ship’s windows.
”Tomorrow we begin our descent towards the surface, which will begin promptly at oh-nine-hundred hours Colorado time. We expect to land and begin collecting samples at approximately thirteen-hundred hours.”
The formal part of his report finished, the man then broke into a wide grin, dark eyes lighting up.
”It’s an amazing feeling, being right on the doorstep of discovery like this. When we step off of the ship, we’ll be further away from home then any human has ever been. Who knows what we could find down there?”
With that, the video clicked off, and the narration resumed.
“The next day, at approximately the time the crew was supposed to be making their final approach to the surface, something went wrong. The ship stopped transmitting any information, when it was supposed to be sending passive updates at all times, though due to the delay in sending messages between Kerberos and Earth the staff at the Galaxy Garrison weren’t aware until nearly two months later.”
that must have been a real ‘oh shit’ moment
“Since the ship was designed to always transmit updates, it would have had to have been completely destroyed for the information flow to completely shut off as it did. Therefore, the official story released by the Galaxy Garrison was that the ship crashed on approach to Kerberos due to pilot error.”
i’m just- i’m sure this is interesting information but i’m just waiting for it to turn fucking stupid
that’s nobody’s fault but yours
“So let’s begin with theory number one, also known as the official story: that the disappearance of the mission was a result of simple pilot error resulting in a crash. While it’s plausible, considering the treacherous and unmapped surface of Kerberos is covered in ice and rock crags, it has been highly controversial on Earth due to the identity of the pilot in question.”
“Takashi Shirogane was an experienced pilot handpicked for this mission, and had flown dozens of successful sub-orbital missions, as well as practicing this specific approach in a simulator for hundreds of hours before the mission launched. As soon as the ‘pilot error’ story was printed in a Garrison press release, there was outrage in the military community for what was perceived as slander, as well as considerable skepticism regarding whether Shirogane would have ever made a mistake catastrophic enough to result in the deaths of the whole crew.”
“Amusingly, this outrage even extended to the Garrison itself, where a top student was reportedly expelled for physically assaulting the commander who arranged and ordered the mission when he made the announcement.”
holy shit!
(wheeze)
he actually, according to this he actually hospitalized the commander
jesus!
don’t, uh, don’t talk shit about the pilot, noted
well the point i’m trying to make here is just, a lot of people don’t think that this pilot would have ever made this mistake
right, right, i get it
“As a result, the idea that the Garrison was hiding something became popular in conspiracy circles-”
which you know because you’re in conspiracy circles
shut up
i- whu- that wasn’t even an insult! it’s true!
“-but also became popularized in the mainstream for a several month period as a result of the actions of one Katie Holt, daughter of Samuel Holt and sister of Matthew. She gained Internet fame when, after a tabloid reporter came to her house shortly after the release of the story about the ship’s crash, grabbed the microphone being held in her face and gave an interview that briefly trended worldwide.”
The screen switches to another video. This one shows a furious teenage girl glaring directly into the camera, holding a microphone with the TMZ logo emblazoned on it. There are tears welling in her eyes, but she’s not crying. Her caramel hair has been raked back into a lopsided ponytail, and there’s a round pair of glasses tucked into her shirt pocket. In the background, the reporter can be faintly heard protesting.
“People keep saying my family is dead. They’re not, and I won’t believe otherwise unless I- unless I see for myself. Shiro wouldn’t have crashed that ship and my brother promised me he was going to come home. They wouldn’t just…”
She trails off for a moment and scrubs at her eyes with her sleeve with angry, fast movements before continuing with renewed fervor.
”...The Garrison is hiding something. I know they are. They won’t release the transmissions or the photos from the day the ship stopped broadcasting and- fuck off, I’m not done- and they won’t say anything about what sort of pilot error caused the crash, they’re lying!”
At this point the reporter finally manages to grab his microphone back, and the video ends.
“All of this brings us to our second theory, and my personal favorite-”
don’t you fucking say it-
“That extraterrestrial abduction was responsible for the disappearance of the Kerberos mission and its crew.”
i knew it was coming, i fucking knew it was coming and it was just as bad as i thought it would be
you good?
just get it over with
you don’t need to make it sound like i’m going to kill you
you’re killing my sanity
“It’s worth noting that the timeline of transmissions has been rumored to not match up with the Garrison’s story. Unfortunately the complete refusal to release the final transmissions, which is in itself suspicious, means that this claim, which states that the last broadcasts were actually sent after the ship would have landed, can’t be verified.”
“The Galaxy Garrison’s main base also has a long association with extraterrestrial activity, having been built on top of the site of the defunct Dulce Base on the Colorado border with New Mexico, which has been host to UFO sightings dating all the way back to 1979.”
“If the Kerberos mission ran afoul of an alien spaceship, it would explain many things: the years-long reticence of the Garrison on the topic of the mission, the seemingly completely out of character behavior of the ‘pilot error,’ and even this story about the secret last transmissions. Maybe they made it safely down to the planetoid’s surface, only to discover that they weren’t the first ones there after all.”
meh
meh?
quit while you’re ahead
so, i was ahead?
i mean, okay
i’ll grant you that this seems- vaguely more plausible than some of your other theories
i’ll take it
“Was the vanishing of the Kerberos mission truly a case of a tragic mistake by an otherwise ace pilot, or was it the result of extraterrestrial intervention? Any answers are likely long since lost to space, leaving this case forever… unsolved.”