...continuation of "Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and "The Lost Cities of Barsoom""

Again, sunlight is coming from the right.

For those with minimal experience in aerial archaeology -- let alone, a background in analyzing ruins on another planet via satellite (!) -- it may be a bit difficult to see some of the more subtle features in these images ... to say nothing of coming to grips with the inherent unbelievably ... after all the NASA propaganda ... of viewing actual ancient ruins on the planet Mars!

What’s needed is a solid scientific basis for comparison.

That comparison (another example, below) -- acquired as a set of 1930’s aerial photographs over a similar desiccated landscape here on Earth -- presents a standard archaeological example of another partially-buried terrestrial ruin in Iran, for which there is NO SCIENTIFIC DOUBT as to it’s "artificiality" ... to be compared directly to what we’ve found on Mars.

Note the astonishing scientific similarity ....

In terms of recognizing the hallmarks of "intelligence" via such "remote sensing" technology, the rules are simple: look for the geometry ... repeating, rectangular geometry ... and, features arrayed in straight lines (especially those straight line features simultaneously arrayed at right angles to each other ...).

Discovery of such repeating "Euclidian geometry," above a certain scale ... on ANY planet ... is THE major, essentially fool-proof signature... that intelligence "was there" ....

Or, as the late Carl Sagan noted so succinctly in "Cosmos" many years ago ....

"The first indication of intelligent life on Earth lies in the geometric regularity of its constructions ...."

This is, by no means, an "exhaustive" listing or analysis of the areas -- or the number -- of "anomalous geometric artifacts" present in just this first MRO HiRISE "test" image! For a more comprehensive survey (and, with thumbnails ...) -- carried out independently by another researcher, also a member of the Enterprise Conference Team -- go here: http://www.mroimages.com/

There -- organized by category and location on this 30.9 by 11.7 mile HiRISE 190.5 Megabyte image -- is a far more complete survey of the "wonders" to be found in just this one small region .... Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Is it any "wonder" now that many have begun to question seriously ... exactly "why" and "for whom" ... is this (already astonishing) "reconnaissance of Mars" REALLY being carried out ..!?
 

So, where does this leave us?

With Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s first released image mosaic -- centered just northwest of the great "Argyre Impact Basin"...

...straddling an ancient river channel called "Ogygis Rupes" (below) -- we not only have more than ample new confirmation of intelligently-designed artifacts on Mars ... we see these latest examples spread across a very large area on Mars, encompassing at least several hundred square miles (!) -- indicative of another, one-time city-sized complex ... suddenly destroyed by some immense catastrophe ... only to be excavated once again by the inexorable forces of entropy and Time.....

Besides countless earlier examples of equally astonishing "half-buried artificial structures on the Red Planet," captured by every previous NASA unmanned spacecraft -- such as this remarkable find (below, right), imaged by Mars Global Surveyor a few years ago ... of another striking, obviously sand-covered artificial ruin on Mars, located at 28.38° N., 332.54° W., in a region called (appropriately) "Arabia Terra"...

...we also find a more clandestine record of completely independent but strikingly similar Soviet confirmation of "ET Martian ruins."

The prime example of Soviet contributions in this area came with the ill-fated Phobos 2 Mars Mission, in 1989.

Phobos 2 -- before it was mysteriously "lost" (after only 90 days in Mars orbit) -- transmitted striking infrared images (below) of additional, highly geometric, also half-buried Martian features... eerily similar (but in a totally different region -- Hydroates Chaos ...) to our latest "buried Martian city" (northwest of the Argyre Impact Basin).

In 2002, when NASA’s Mars Odyssey Mission released its first nighttime IR "test" images -- exactly 13 years (to the day!) after Phobos 2 acquired its own anomalous IR of its "buried Martian city" -- the Odyssey data also revealed an astonishing set of incredibly geometric, half-buried Martian landforms ... in a region "right next door" to the Soviet Phobos 2 images -- in "Hydaspsis Chaos" (2° North/ 29° West -- below).

Although NASA/JPL tried to pass these astonishing, clearly artificial structures off as merely typical "Martian mesas," the undeniable, incredibly redundant geometric nature of the objects (both inside and out -- note the "double, triple, and even quadruple, parallel walls!"), and their obvious, carefully designed architectural layout in relation to each other ... argued compellingly for a totally different scenario ....

A comparison with a partially-buried ruin in Iran (below, left) reveals an astonishing similarity between this Earthly, man-made structure ... with it’s periodic "walled fortifications" -- and its vastly larger, but identically "walled" counterparts ... on Mars!

But -- is NASA the only space agency to have acquired solid evidence, from a variety of missions and their instruments, of "buried Martian cities" ...?

In 1999, well after the "collapse" of the old Soviet Union, the lead Russian designer of unmanned spacecraft bound for Mars and Venus (including Phobos 2) -- V.G. Perminov -- in collaboration with NASA Headquarters’s own History Office, in Washington D.C. -- had translated a very personal (if all-too-brief) memoir of the Soviet’s many attempts to send "his" spacecraft to the Red Planet ... titled:

" The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union"

Provocatively, in his own Introduction to "Difficult Road ..." Perminov makes some eerily "predictive" comments ....

"... The first stage of Mars exploration is finished. Surprisingly, vegetation, canals, and traces of intelligent life have not been found. However, dried-up courses of waterways have been observed. What happened? Why did water disappear? Did primitive or intelligent life exist in the past, or does it exist now on Mars?

"Today, we cannot answer these questions. It now seems like Mars is a lifeless desert. On the other hand, we know that in Earth’s deserts, archeologists dig up cities that flourished in the past but were neglected by ancient people, and they are now covered with sand.

"In 1971, the largest dust storm ever registered by astronomers covered the whole Martian surface. For a few months, hundreds of millions of tons of dust were suspended in the Martian atmosphere. As a result, one could not observe the Martian surface. Nevertheless, one cannot rule out that cities covered by sand may exist in the Martian deserts. That would be evidence of an ancient Martian civilization that disappeared or moved to other planets [emphasis added] ...."

Question: Was Perminov merely "speculating" re what he’d hoped to find on Mars .... or... was he, in fact, subtly revealing what the Soviet’s had already -- and also secretly -- confirmed ... ?... "The Lost Cities of Barsoom!!"

And then published in, of all places... an official NASA/Russian monograph -- detailing the star-crossed history of repeated Soviet efforts to reach Mars ... if not the reason why?!

Stay tuned ....
 

Update -- 4/6/06

The first HiRISE engineering "test color strip" of Mars -- acquired March 24^th just prior to the beginning of MRO’s next six months of aerobraking into its final "science orbit"-- has now been released by the HiRISE Team at the University of Arizona, JPL and NASA (below).

A full-scale Tiff (uncompressed -- 85 Meg!) version of this same image, for detailed study and enlargement, is also available at NASA’s "Planetary Photojournal."

The new image is of a restricted, central section of the original B&W, full engineering MRO mosaic (below) -- the latter released to the media and general public by NASA March 24^th.

The new image was created by the acquisition of multi-spectral infrared and blue-green color data, combined with the originally released red filtered mosaic (in B&W -- above) -- detected over the central section of the larger image via three sets of specifically "filtered CCD picture element detectors."

When these three separate, overlapping images are recombined through appropriate filters, the result is a full-color "central color strip" -- inset into the larger "red filter" (presented in B&W) mosaic ... (below).

This image is NOT "natural color" (as the human eye would see Mars, looking down from orbit), but is a "false color view" ... shifted towards the infrared. It is designed to detect subtle surface mineral and composition differences, revealed as different color shadings.

When the final Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Science Orbit is achieved (sometime in September/October), another high-powered instrument on-board -- the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) -- would be able to map the same features (imaged here -- above) in 544 much narrower-spectrum "colors" (!) -- allowing unique mineral identification of the composition of the curiously "colored" patches seen in this false-color HIRISE view.

The spatial resolution of CRISM at that point will be ~18 meters-per-pixel (~60 feet) -- about the size of a small house! -- compared to the ~8-foot-per-pixel resolution of the present color HiRISE image (in its intended final orbit, the pixel resolution of HIRISE will be about "11 inches per pixel").

In terms of specific features on this landscape, what would future CRISM observations reveal about this (by now) familiar cluster of "highly regular, geometric-spaced objects" from the initial MRO mosaic ... exposed at the bottom of an ancient impact crater (below)?

The color version of these enigmatic structures from the color HiRISE image (below), reveals tantalizing hints of what’s to come.

Not only is the highly ordered geometry still present (complete with the delicate rectilinear detail seen between the structures, also visible in the B&W version ...), the color of these clearly organized objects is "greenish" ... at distinct variance with the more neutral "grayish," windblown sands seen between the structures and around the crater itself.

Something about these "geometric objects’" composition -- in this false color HIRISE image -- is revealing a "greenish cast" ... which, significantly, is NOT present in the windblown materials in which they’re still partially buried!

A CRISM hyperspectral set of observations in the Fall could, in principle, determine exactly what that "greenish stuff" could be -- its composition -- and if, in fact, that composition is consistent with "naturally expected" desert Martian minerals for this region .... or, if these objects are indeed made of something more "exotic."

Looking back to the larger color frame (below) -- just to the northeast of this anomalous collection of geometric "stuff" in the crater floor -- there appear to be two curious "greenish triangles" that immediately stand out as also "unusual" in this false color view.

One appears to be a raised feature -- a roughly triangular-shaped mesa. The other is clearly a shallow depression in the desert ... with another collection of semi-organized features on its floor ....

An even closer view (below) reveals tantalizing hints that we may be seeing more remains of ruins...

For, the green "triangular mesa" contains a perfect right angle "base" on the upper right (northeast) corner, as well as eroded geometry on top that eerily echoes this same rectilinear pattern. This northeast/southwest alignment is also shared by the collection of much smaller objects on the floor of the near-by "green triangular depression."

Most striking, indeed, is the definite green color of both these features ....

The same "green" -- which revealed itself in the rectilinear collection of apparent structures in the nearby crater floor!

If these are, indeed, artificial remains of ancient buildings and more massive Martian structures, eroding out of the desert sands that had somehow originally buried them a long, long time ago ... were both sets of objects originally made from the same artificial alloy, or material ... which is now being detected as "greenish stuff" in this false color, HIRISE view?

And, could future high-resolution CRISM observations of these same features confirm such a possible scenario ...?

The answer’s "Yes!"

Again -- as with the B&W MRO mosaic released earlier -- we have only "scratched the surface" of the details of this extraordinary HIRISE color image. There is more ....

Stay tuned.