Excerpt from The Official NASA Procedures for Contact with Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life © National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, 2029 (Classification Level AAA)

PROBABILITY OF CONTACT

Over the last few decades, it has become evident that there are a vast number of planets in our galaxy. Virtually every other star we have aimed a telescope at has a planet that orbits it, if not multiple planets. Granted the majority of these are not conducive to life, but since there are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone,^I if even only a fraction of a percent have a habitable planet around them, then there would still be hundreds of millions of planets capable of supporting life. It stands to reason, then, that there could be millions of planets out there where intelligent life has evolved, and certainly some of them may be far ahead of us technologically, possessing the ability and desire to travel to planets such as ours. Therefore, it is not so much a question of if we will ever have contact with intelligent life from another planet—but when.

This manual has been designed to facilitate such a landmark event. NASA’s Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs (DEXA) has been planning for this eventuality for decades, assembling an incredible staff of astronomers, astrobiologists, linguists, doctors, engineers, and military specialists who are all working together to ensure that when the date of alien contact arrives, everything will proceed without a hitch.

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I. And 100 billion galaxies in the universe