Of course it opens up a whole mess of new questions. Do "they" know more than they're admitting too? What is Beta, and what's going to happen when they have the complete set?
It seems very 2001 Blank Monolith like, in fact it reminds me even more of the original
Sentinel short story.
It'll be entertaining to see if the writers manage to avoid giving us a solution which is too obvious, and also isn't just very surreal and suitably fuzzy and vague.
At least it answers one of my questions in the OP
"And why would you bother with one vastly complex mission ?", because as someone said, it's an interplanetary scavenger hunt, although I would have thought that at least for some of the planets that we can deal with moderately well, like Mars, they would have sent an unmanned mission first. It would have been easier and faster to send something in effect with a shovel and camera on it, to dig Alpha up.
Edit: Oh, and why can't Jen see Beta? That's clearly going to be significant in the storyline very shortly.The buggers have got me hooked now, however bad the storyline and acting is, I need to know the answer!