Interesting little tidbit I found in a data pad. (spoiler for subnautica 1) (minor spoiler for below zero.)

So as you wander around in bases and wrecks you will often find data pads lying around, like in the first game. A lot of these seem unfinished or just plain blank, but some of them tell an interesting story. They are news-style articles about the aurora incident from the first game, a lot of them being speculation because alterra isn't talking much. They provide neat little world building but don't contribute much to the story.

There is one in particular I found that peaked my interest, it questions whether a spike in Ion energy detected on the planet recently (from the writers point of view) and months ago when the aurora went missing, could be related to the aurora's crash landing. This spike in Ion energy is clearly the cannon that shot the aurora down, which would mean that the second surge would be when the sunbeam was shot down.

I thought this was interesting because it shows that canonically the sunbeam was shot down, and the alternate story where you saved it are considered noncanonical.