I don't know if anyone expressed this idea, so...
We know that the UA scans ships within 1 km radius and send Morse signals describing the scanned ship, the nearest station and the nearest star. All UA are directed toward Merope.
My idea is that the UA sending the data to the alien station\base\outpost and aliens are looking for something or "someone" ...
President Halsey and "Starship One" disappeared during FS jump ...
You probably already guessed where I'm going.
None of CMDR's, who were scanned by UA, are interesting to the creators of Artifact.Most likely they are looking for those who have power, our leaders. And with the Powerplay DLC, we now have 10 of them. (I mean the leaders)
A lot of different tests were carried out on UA. But has anyone tried to bring UA, to one of the political leaders? Maybe artifacts are looking for them...
To prove this, we need to send a ship (probably capitalship) with one of the leaders, to the ring around Merope, to find one of the UA, and see what happens.
After the UA will scan the ship, it (the ship) must make the jump into the system, where other CMDR's will wait.
If my theory is correct, we will not see the ship at the destination point...
...or ever at all...
If my theory is not a nonsense, a politician whom we send will determine our relationship with the creators of artifacts. So choose wisely!
We will also need to choose the best from CQC to send them with this capitalship, in case of trouble (Only small vessels will fit in hangars).
If you think that this theory is awful or it has already been discussed - well ...