SCP-5060 as viewed from an SCP Foundation probe. SCP-5060's numerous satellites have been digitally removed.

Item #: SCP-5060

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: Physical containment of SCP-5060 is currently impossible. As such, Foundation efforts are to be focused on the reduction of public awareness of SCP-5060.

Foundation Operatives within the International Astronomical Union are to report on any ongoing scientific investigation into the star HD 4560. A Foundation-operated web crawler (I/O-APHRODITE) is to monitor online communities for discussions/media regarding SCP-5060. MTF Gamma-5 ("Red Herrings") is to investigate these discussions and provide needed amnesticization/cover-up on a case-by-case basis.

Project Heimdall currently employs modified exploratory probes in order to study SCP-5060. These probes are equipped with advanced sensor suites as well as FTL propulsion systems reverse-engineered from the study of SCP-2117. Secondary mission objectives are pending approval contingent upon the inhabitants of SCP-5060 possessing interstellar travel.

Description: SCP-5060 is a terrestrial exoplanet, roughly 0.95 times the radius and 0.9 times the mass of Earth, in orbit around the star HD 4560. The planet's atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon, and sulfur dioxide, as determined by Foundation probes. Due to the density of the atmosphere, the planet's surface cannot be viewed via visible light from space. At the time of writing, attempts to land probes on the planet have uniformly resulted in the loss of communication with the probe upon entry of SCP-5060's atmosphere.

SCP-5060 has an unusually high number of satellites for its size, with 1260 total as of January 2020. Each satellite is roughly spherical with an average radius of 50 km and is located within the synchronous orbit of SCP-5060. Every 15-26 years, SCP-5060 ejects or launches a new satellite via an unknown mechanism which settles into a similar orbit.1 As a result, it is believed that SCP-5060 hosts an extraterrestrial civilization of some kind.

Examination of these satellites via Foundation probes has determined them to be composed primarily of marble, granite, and quartzite coated in a transparent polymer. Each satellite contains a central hollow chamber. Remote excavation of these chambers has uncovered thousands of ferrous spheres placed within small cavities. These spheres contain a fine powder consisting of carbon, calcium, phosphorus, and other trace elements.

Use of Foundation probes occasionally provokes an aggressive response from SCP-5060 in the form of a 20kg ferrous slug fired at 0.1c. These attacks have the highest chance of occurring when excavation probes attempt to recover material from the satellites. To date, no probes have escaped or survived such an attack and the energy of the projectile makes later recovery impossible.

Attempts at establishing remote radio contact with the inhabitants of SCP-5060 have been met with failure, with no forms of telecommunication broadcasts detectable on SCP-5060's surface. Proposals for additional strategies to determine the technological/biological capabilities of SCP-5060's inhabitants are currently pending review.

Addendum: Update 03/03/2020

At 0800 UTC Project Heimdall defense satellites detected incoming extraterrestrial bodies that proceeded to impact Earth within a period of half an hour. A series of 28 projectiles were recovered from several impact locations around the globe. These locations included:

Arlington National Cemetery

Brookwood Cemetery

The Great Pyramid of Giza

The Taj Mahal

Several cave systems in Indiana

Members of MTF Gamma-5 have been mobilized to reduce the public fallout following this barrage, with the cover story of a previously unknown meteor shower.

Examination of these projectiles found them to be similar to the ones launched from SCP-5060 at Foundation probes. Each projectile had a hollow center and contained one of the 27 Foundation probes previously believed to have been lost in SCP-5060's atmosphere. Additionally, the 28th projectile contained an iron copy of the Voyager Golden Record in which all imagery of humans are scratched out. An additional etching is present on the record in an indecipherable script. It is unknown how the inhabitants of SCP-5060 came into possession of this object, given that neither Voyager I or II have traveled within the vicinity of SCP-5060.

Analysis of the trajectory of the projectiles from data gathered by the Project Heimdall satellites has suggested their origin as the planet Venus. Attempts by Foundation assets to investigate the Venusian surface for potential colonies of the inhabitants of SCP-5060 have been met with similar failures as the investigation of SCP-5060, with loss of communication with probes upon entry into the Venusian atmosphere.

Footnotes

1. This has increased from an average of 8-14 years at the time of SCP-5060's discovery by the Foundation in 1956. To date, the longest observed gap between new satellite appearances is 35 years. The shortest gap between new satellite appearances has been 14 minutes, during a period in which seven new satellites appeared within a four-hour window.