11 - A SPACE BASE ON MARS


Having been to the Moon, Earthlings are eager to set foot on Mars.


It was on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the first landing by Man on the Moon that the President of the United States outlined his country’s stepping stones to Earth’s nearest outer planet. Speaking at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and flanked by the three Apollo 11 astronauts—Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins—President George Bush outlined America’s way stations to Mars. First, progress from the shuttlecraft program to the emplacement in permanent Earth orbit of a Space Station, where the larger vehicles necessary for the onward flights would be assembled.

 

Then would come the establishment of a space base on the Moon, where materials, equipment, and fuels necessary for the long space voyages would be developed and tested, and experience would be gained in Man’s living and working for extended periods in outer space. And finally, the actual expedition to Mars, Vowing to make the United States “a spacefaring nation,” the goal, the President said, will be “back to the Moon, back to the future . . . and then, a journey into tomorrow, to another planet: a manned mission to Mars.”


Back to the future.” The choice of words may or may not have been coincidental; the premise that going to the future involves going back to the past might have been more than a speech writer’s choice slogan.


For there is evidence that “A Space Base on Mars,” this chapter’s heading, should apply not to the discussion of future plans but to a disclosure of what has already taken place in the past: Evidence that a space base existed on the planet Mars in antiquity; and what is even more startling, that it might have been reactivated before our very eyes. If Man is to venture from planet Earth into space, it is only logical and technologically called for to make Mars the first planet on the outbound voyage. The road to other worlds must have way stations due to the laws of celestial motion, the constraints of weight and energy, the requirements for human survival, and limitations on human physical and mental endurance.

 

A spaceship capable of carrying a team of astronauts to Mars and back might have to weigh as much as four million pounds. Lifting such a massive vehicle off the surface of Earth (a planet with a substantial gravitational pull, compared with its immediate neighbors) would require a commensurately large load of fuel that, together with the tanks to hold it, would further increase the lift-off weight and make the launch impractical. (U.S. space shuttles now have a payload capacity of sixty-five thousand pounds.)


Such lift-off and fuel problems would be greatly reduced if the spaceship will be assembled in weightless orbit around the Earth. This scenario envisions an orbiting, manned space station, to which shuttle craft will ferry the knocked-down spaceship. Meanwhile, astronauts stationed on the Moon at a permanent space base would develop the technology required for Man’s survival in space. Man and vehicle would then be joined for the voyage to Mars.


The round trip may take between two and three years, depending on the trajectory and Earth-Mars alignments. The length of stay on Mars will also vary according to these constraints and other considerations, beginning with no stay at all (just several orbits around Mars) to a long stay in a permanent colony served or sustained by shifts of spacecraft and astronauts. Indeed, many advocates of “The Case for Mars,” as this approach has come to be called after several scientific conferences on the subject, consider a manned mission to Mars justified only if a permanent space base is established there, both as a prelude to manned missions to even more distant planets and as the forerunner of a colony, a permanent settlement of Earthlings on a new world.


The progression from shuttlecraft to an orbiting space station to landings on the Moon and the establishment of a space base thereon, all as stepping-stones or way stations toward a landing on Mars, has been described in scenarios that read like science fiction but are based on scientific knowledge and attainable technology. Bases on the Moon and on Mars, even a colony on Mars, have been in the planning for a long time and are deemed entirely feasible. Sustaining human life and activity on the Moon is certainly challenging, but the studies show how it could be achieved. The tasks are more challenging for Mars, since resupply from Earth (as the Moon projects envision) is more difficult and costly. Nevertheless, the vital resources needed by Man to survive and function are available on Mars, and scientists believe that Man could live “off the land” there. Mars, it has been concluded, is habitable—because it was habitable in the past.


Mars appears nowadays as a cold, half-frozen planet inhospitable to anything living upon its surface, with bitter-cold winters and temperatures rising above freezing only at the equator in the warmest season, with vast areas covered either with permafrost or with rusted iron rocks and gravel (which give the planet its reddish hue), with no liquid water to sustain life or oxygen to breathe. But not so long ago in geological terms, it was a planet with relatively pleasant seasons, flowing water, oceans and rivers, cloudy (blue!) skies, and perhaps—just perhaps—even some forms of indigenous simple plant life.


All the various studies converge toward the conclusion that Mars is now going through an ice age, not unlike the ice ages that Earth has experienced periodically. The causes of Earth’s ice ages, attributed to many factors, are now believed to stem
from three basic phenomena that relate to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The first is the configuration of the orbit itself: the orbit, it has been concluded, changes from more circular to more elliptical in a cycle of about one hundred thousand years; this brings the Earth at times closer to the Sun and at times farther away from it.

 

Earth has seasons because the axis of Earth is not perpendicular to its orbital plane (ecliptic) but is tilted, bringing the northern hemisphere under a stronger influence of the Sun’s rays during the (northern) summer (during winter in the southern hemisphere), and vice versa (Fig. 73); but this tilt, now about 23.5 degrees, is not stable; the Earth, like a rolling ship, changes its tilt by about 3 degrees back and forth in a cycle that takes about forty-one thousand years to complete.

Figure 73


The greater the tilt the more extreme are the winters and summers; air and water flows change and aggravate the climatic changes that we call “ice ages” and “ interglacial” warm periods. A third contributing cycle is that of the Earth’s wobble as it spins, its axis forming an imaginary circle in the heavens; this is the phenomenon of Precession of the Equinoxes, and the duration of this cycle is about twenty-six thousand years.


The planet Mars is also subject to all three cycles, except that its larger orbit around the Sun and greater tilt differential cause more extreme climatic swings. The cycle, as we have mentioned, is believed to last some fifty thousand years on Mars (although shorter and longer durations have also been suggested).


When the next Martian warm period, or interglacial, arrives, the planet will literally flow with water, its seasons will not be as harsh, and its atmosphere will not be as alien to Earthlings as it is today. When was the last “interglacial” epoch on Mars? The time could not have been too distant, because otherwise the dust storms on Mars would have obliterated more, if not most, of the evidence on its surface of once flowing rivers, ocean shorelines, and lake basins; and there would not be as much water vapor still in the Martian atmosphere as is found today.

“Running water must have existed on the red planet in relatively recent times, geologically speaking,” according to Harold Masursky of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Some believe the last change occurred no more than ten thousand years ago.


Those who are planning the landings and extended stays on Mars do not expect the climate there to revert to an interglacial epoch within the next two decades; but they do believe that the basic requirements for life and survival on Mars are locally available. Water, as has been shown, is present as permafrost in vast areas and could be found in the mud of what from space appear to be dry riverbeds. When geologists at Arizona State University working for NASA were suggesting Mars landing sites to Soviet scientists, they pointed to the great canyon in the Lunae Planum basin as a place where a roving vehicle “could visit former riverbeds and dig into the sediments of a delta where an ancient river flowed into a basin,” and find there liquid water.

 

Aquifers—subterranean water pools—are a sure source of water in the opinion of many scientists. New analyses of data from spacecraft as well as from Earth-based instruments led a team headed by Robert L. Huguenin of the University of Massachusetts to conclude, in June 1980, that two concentrations of water evaporation on Mars south of its equator suggest the existence of vast reservoirs of liquid water just a few inches below the Martian surface. Later that year Stanley H. Zisk of the Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts, and Peter J. Mouginis-Mark of Brown University, Rhode Island, reported in Science and Nature (November 1980) that radar probing of areas in the planet’s southern hemisphere indicated “moist oases” of “extensive liquid water” beneath the surface.

 

And then, of course, there is all the water captured in the ice cap of the northern pole, which melts around its rims during the northern summer, creating large, visible darkish patches (Fig. 74).

Figure 74


Morning fogs and mists that have been observed on Mars suggest to scientists the existence of dew, a source of water for many plants and animals on Earth in arid areas.


The Martian atmosphere, at first sight inhospitable and even poisonous to Man and life, could in fact be a source of vital resources. The atmosphere has been found to contain some water vapor, which could be extracted by condensation. It could also be a source of oxygen for breathing and burning. It consists on Mars primarily of carbon dioxide (CO2) with small percentages of nitrogen, argon, and traces of oxygen (Earth’s atmosphere consists primarily of nitrogen, with a large percentage of oxygen and small amounts of other gases).

 

The process of converting carbon dioxide (C02) to carbon monoxide (CO), thereby releasing oxygen (CO + O) is almost elementary and could easily be performed by astronauts and settlers. Carbon monoxide can then serve as a simple rocket fuel. The planet’s reddish-brown, or “rusty,” hue is also a clue to the availability of oxygen, for it is the result of the actual rusting of iron rocks on Mars.

 

The product is iron oxide—iron that has combined with oxygen. On Mars it is of a type called limonite, a combination of iron oxide (Fe2O3) with several molecules of water (H2O); with the proper equipment, the plentiful oxygen could be separated and extracted. The hydrogen obtainable by breaking down water into its component elements could be used in the production of foods and useful materials, many of which are based on hydrocarbons {hydrogen-carbon combinations).


Although the Martian soil is relatively high in salts, scientists believe it could be washed with water sufficiently to the point where patches would be suitable for plant cultivation in greenhouses; local foods could thus be grown, especially from seeds of salt-resistant strains of grains and vegetables; human waste could be used as fertilizer, as it is used in many Third World countries on Earth. Nitrogen, needed by plants and fertilizers, is in short supply on Mars but not absent: the atmosphere, though 95 percent carbon dioxide, does contain almost 3 percent nitrogen. The greenhouses for growing all this food would be made of inflatable plastic domes; electricity would be obtained from solar-powered batteries; the rover vehicles will also be solar-powered.


Another source not just of water but also of heat on Mars is indicated by the past volcanic activity there. Of several notable volcanoes, the one named Olympus, after the Greek mountain of the gods, dwarfs anything on Earth or even in the Solar System. The largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, rises 6.3 miles; Olympus Mons on Mars towers 15 miles above the surrounding plain; its crater’s top measures 45 miles across. The volcanoes of Mars and other evidence of volcanic activity on the planet indicate a hot molten core and thus the possible existence of warm surface spots, hot-water springs, and other phenomena resulting from internally generated heat.


With a day almost exactly the length of a day on Earth, seasons (although about twice as long as Earth’s), equatorial regions, icy northern and southern poles, water resources that once were seas and lakes and rivers, mountain ranges and plains, volcanoes and canyons, Mars is Earthlike in so many ways. Indeed, some scientists believe that Mars, although created at the same time as the other planets 4.6 billion years ago, is at the stage Earth was at its beginnings, before plant life began to emit oxygen and change Earth’s atmosphere.

 

This notion has served as a basis for the suggestion by proponents of the Gaia Theory of how Man might “jump the gun” on Martian evolution by bringing life to it; for they hold that it was Life that made Earth hospitable to life. Writing in The Greening of Mars, James Lovelock and Michael Allaby employed science fiction to describe how microorganisms and “halocarbon gases” would be sent from Earth to Mars in rockets, the former to start the biological chain and the latter to create a shield in the Martian atmosphere. This shield of halocarbon gases, suspended in the atmosphere above the now cold and arid planet, would block the dissipation into space of the warmth Mars receives from the Sun and its own internal heat and would create an artificially induced “greenhouse” effect.

 

The warming and the thickened atmosphere would release Mars’s frozen waters, enhance plant growth, and thereby increase the planet’s oxygen supply. Each step in this artificially induced evolution would strengthen the process; thus will the bringing of Life to Mars make it hospitable to life. The suggestion by the two scientists that the transformation of Mars into a habitable planet—they called the process “Terra forming”—should begin with the creation of an artificial shield to protect the planet’s dissipating heat and water vapor by artificially suspending a suitable material in the planet’s atmosphere was made by them in 1984.


Whether by coincidence or not, it was once again a case of modern science catching up with ancient knowledge. For, in The I2th Planet (1976), it was described how the Anunnaki came to Earth about 450,000 years ago in order to obtain gold—needing the metal to protect life on their planet Nibiru by suspending gold particles as a shield in its dwindling atmosphere, to reverse the loss of heat, air, and water.


The plans proposed by the advocates of the Gaia Hypothesis are based on an assumption and a presumption. The first, that Mars does not have life-forms of its own; the second, that people from one planet have the right to introduce their lifeforms to another world, whether or not it has its own life. But does Mars have life on it or as some prefer to ask, did it have life on it in its less harsh epochs? The question has preoccupied those who have planned and executed the various missions to Mars; and after all the scanning and photographing and probing, it is evident that Life as it has blossomed on Earth—trees and forests, bushes and grasses, flying birds and roaming animals—is just not there. But what about lesser lifeforms—lichens or algae or the lowly bacteria?


Although Mars is much smaller than Earth (its mass is about a tenth that of Earth, its diameter about half) its surface, now all dry land, is about the same area as the dry-land portion of Earth’s surface. The area to be explored is thus the same as the area on Earth with all its continents, mountains, valleys, equatorial and polar zones; its warm and the cold places; its humid regions and the dry desert ones. When an outline of the United States, coast to coast, is superimposed on the face of Mars (Fig. 75), the scope of the exploration and the variety of terrains and climates to contend with can well be appreciated.


No wonder when then that the first successful unmanned Mars probes. Mariners 4, 6, and 7 (1965-69), which photographed parts of the planet’s surface in the course of flybys, revealed a planet that was heavily cratered and utterly desolate, with little sign of any geologic activity in its past. As it happened, the pictures were almost all of the cratered highlands in the southern hemisphere of Mars.

 

This image, of a planet not only without life on it but itself a lifeless and dead globe, changed completely when Manner 9 went into orbit around Mars in 1971 and surveyed almost its entire surface. It showed a living planet with a history of geologic activity and volcanism, with plains and mountains, with canyons in which America’s Grand Canyon could be swallowed without a trace, and the marks of flowing water. It was not only a living planet but one that could have life upon it.

Figure 75


The search for life on Mars was thus made a prime objective of the Viking missions. Viking 1 and Viking 2 were launched from Cape Canaveral in the summer of 1975 and reached their destination in July and August of 1976. Each consisted of an Orbiter that remained in orbit around the planet for ongoing observation, and of a Lander that was lowered to the planet’s surface. Although to ensure safe landings, relatively flat sites in the northern hemisphere, not too distant from each other, were selected for the touchdowns, “biological criteria” (i.e., the possibility of life) “dominated the decision regarding the latitude at which the spacecraft would land.”

 

The orbiters have provided a rich array of data about Mars that is still being studied and analyzed, with new details and insights constantly emerging; the landers sent thrilling photographs of the Martian landscape at very close range and conducted a series of experiments in search of Life.


Besides instruments to analyze the atmosphere and cameras to photograph the areas in which they touched down, each Lander carried a combined gas-chromatograph/mass-spectrometer for analyzing the surface for organic material, as well as three instruments designed to detect metabolic activity by any organism in the soil. The soil was scooped up with a mechanical arm, put into a small furnace, heated, and otherwise treated and tested. There were no living organisms in the samples; only carbon dioxide and a small amount of water vapor were found.

 

There were not even the organic molecules that impacting meteorites bring with them; the presumption is that if such molecules had been delivered to Mars, the present high level of ultraviolet light that strikes the planet, whose protective atmosphere is now almost gone, must have destroyed them. During the long days of experiments on Mars, drama and excitement were not absent. In retrospect the ability of the NASA team to manipulate and direct from Earth equipment on the surface of Mars seems like a fairy tale; but both planned routines and emergencies were adroitly tackled. Mechanical arms failed to work but were fixed by radio commands.

 

There were other malfunctions and adjustments. There was breathtaking suspense when the gas-exchange experiments detected a burst of oxygen; there was the need to have Viking 2 instruments confirm or disprove the results of experiments carried out by those of Viking 1 that left open the question of whether changes in the scooped-up soil samples were organic or chemical, biological or inanimate. Viking 2 results confirmed the reactions of Viking 1 experiments: when gases were mixed or when soil was added to a “nutrient soup,” there were marked changes in the level of carbon dioxide; but whether the changes represented a chemical reaction or a biological response remained a puzzle.


As eager as scientists were to find life on Mars, and thereby find support for their theories of how life on Earth began spontaneously from a primordial soup, most had to conclude regretfully that no evidence of life on Mars was found. Norman Horowitz of Caltech summed up the prevailing opinion when he stated (in Scientific American, November 1977) that,

“at least those areas on Mars examined by the two spacecraft are not habitats of life. Possibly the same conclusion applies to the entire planet, but that is an intricate problem that cannot yet be addressed.”

In subsequent years, in laboratory experiments in which the soil and conditions on Mars were simulated as best as the researchers could, the reactions indicated biological responses. Especially intriguing were experiments conducted in 1980 at the Space Biology Laboratory of Moscow University: when Earthly life-forms were introduced into a simulated Martian environment, birds and mammals expired in a few seconds, turtles and frogs lived many hours, insects survived for weeks—but fungi, lichens, algae, and mosses quickly adapted themselves to the new environment; oats, rye, and beans sprouted and grew but could not reproduce. Life, then, could take hold on Mars; but had it?

 

With 4.6 billion years at the disposal of evolution on Mars, where are not merely some microorganisms (which may or may not exist) but higher life-forms? Or were the Sumerians right in saying that life sprouted on Earth so soon after its formation only because the “Seed of Life” was brought to it, by Nibiru? While the soil of Mars still keeps its riddle of whether or not its test reactions were chemical and lifeless or biological and caused by living organisms, the rocks of Mars challenge us with even more enigmatic puzzles.


One can begin with the mystery of Martian rocks found not on Mars but on Earth. Among the thousands of meteorites found on Earth, eight that were discovered in India, Egypt, and France between 1815 and 1865 (known as the SNC group, after the initials of the sites’ names) were unique in that their age was only 1.3 billion years, whereas meteorites are generally 4.5 billion years old. When several more were discovered in Antarctica in 1979, the gaseous composition of the Martian atmosphere was already known; comparisons revealed that the SNC meteorites contained traces of isotopic Nitrogen-14, Argon-40 and 36, Neon-20, Krypton-84, and Xenon-13 almost identical to the presence of these rare gases on Mars.


How did these meteorites or rocks reach Earth? Why are they only 1.3 billion years old? Did a catastrophic impact on Mars cause them to somehow defy its gravity and fly off to Earth?

Figure 76


The rocks discovered in Antarctica are even more puzzling. A photograph of one of them, released by NASA and published in The New York Times of September 1, 1987, shows it to be not “football sized” as these rocks had been described, but rather a broken-off block (Fig. 76) of four bricklike, artificially shaped and angled stones fitted together—something one would expect to find in pre-Inca ruins in Peru’s Sacred Valley (Fig. 77) but not on Mars.

 

Yet all tests on the rock (it is no longer referred to as a meteorite) attest to its Martian origin. To compound the mystery, photographs of the Martian surface have revealed features that, on seeing them, astronomers dubbed “Inca City.”

 

Located in the planet’s southern part, they represent a series of steep walls made up of squarish or rectangular segments (Fig. 78 is from Mariner-9 photographic frame 4212-15). John McCauley, a NASA geologist, commented that the “ridges” were “continuous, show no breaching, and stand out among the surrounding plains and small hills like walls of an ancient ruin.”

Figure 77


Figure 78


This immense wall or series of connected shaped stone blocks bears a striking resemblance to such colossal and enigmatic structures on Earth as the immense wall of gigantic stone blocks that forms the base of the vast platform at Baalbek in Lebanon (Fig. 79) or to the cruder but equally impressive zigzagging parallel stone walls of Sacsahuaman above Cuzco in Peru (Fig.80).

Figure 79
 

In The Stairway to Heaven and The Lost Realms, I have attributed both structures to the Anunnaki/Nefilim. The features on Mars might perhaps be explained as natural phenomena, and the size of the blocks, ranging from three to five miles in length, might very well indicate the hand of nature rather than of people, of whatever provenance. On the other hand, since no plausible natural explanation has emerged, they might be the remains of artificial structures—if the “giants’” of Near Eastern and Andean lore had also visited Mars...

Figure 80


The notion of “canals” on Mars appeared to have been laid to rest when—after decades of ridicule—scientists suggested that what Schiaparelli and Lowell had observed and mapped were in fact channels of dried-up rivers. Yet other features were found on the Martian surface that defy easy explanation. These include white “streaks” that run in straight lines for endless miles—sometimes parallel, sometimes at angles to each other, sometimes crossing other, narrower “tracks” (Fig. 81 is a sketched-over photo).

Figure 81

 

Once again, the NASA teams suggested that windblown dust storms may have caused these features. This may be so, although the regularity and especially the intersecting of the lines seem to indicate an artificial origin. Searching for a comparable feature on Earth, one must look to the famous Nazca lines in southern Peru (Fig. 82) which have been attributed to “the gods.”

Figure 82

 

Both the Near East and the Andes are known for their various pyramids—the immense and unique ones at Giza, the stepped
pyramids or ziggurats of Mesopotamia and of the early American civilizations.

 

As pictures taken by the Mariner and Viking cameras seem to show, even pyramids, or what look like pyramids, have been seen on Mars.


What appear to be three-sided pyramids in the Elysium (map. Fig. 83) plateau in the region called Trivium Charontis were first noticed on Mariner-9 frames 4205-78, taken on February 8, 1972 and 4296-23, taken six months later.

Figure 83

 

Attention was focused on two pairs of “tetrahedron pyramidal structures,” to use the cautious scientific terminology; one pair were huge pyramids, while the other pair were much smaller, and they seemed to be laid out in a rhombus-shaped pattern (Fig. 84).

Here again, the size of the “pyramids”—the larger are each two miles across and half a mile high—suggests that they are natural phenomena, and a study in the journal Icarus (vol. 22, 1974, by Victor Ablordeppy and Mark Gipson) offered four theories to explain these formations naturally. David Chandler (Life on Mars) and astronomer Francis Graham (in Frontiers of Science, November-December 1980), among others, showed the flaws in each theory.


The fact that the features were photographed six months apart, at different sunlights and angles, and yet show their accurate terrahedral shapes, convinces many that they are artificial structures, even if we do not understand the reason for their great size.

“Given the present lack of any easily acceptable explanation,” Chandler wrote, “there seems to be no reason to exclude from consideration the most obvious conclusion of all: perhaps they were built by intelligent beings.”

And Francis Graham, stating that “the conjecture that these are buildings of an ancient race of Martians must take its place among the theories of their origin,” wondered whether future explorers might discover in these structures inner chambers, buried entrances, or inscriptions that might have withstood “ten thousand millennia of wind erosion.”


More “pyramids” with varying numbers of smooth sides have been discerned by researchers who have scanned the Martian photographs. Interest, and controversy, have focused mainly on an area named Cydonia (see map, Fig. 83 above) because a group of what may be artificial structures appears to be aligned with what some called a Martian “sphinx” to the east of these structures, as can be readily seen in the panoramic NASA photo O35-A-72 (Plate E).

 Plate E

 

What is noticeable is a rock with the features of a well-proportioned human face, seemingly of a man wearing some kind of a helmet (Fig. 85 above), with a slightly open mouth and with eyes that look straight out at the viewer—if the viewer happens to be in the skies above Mars. Like the other “monuments”—the features that resemble artificial structures—on Mars, this one, too, is of large proportions: the Face measures almost a mile from top to bottom and has been estimated to rise almost half a mile above the surrounding plateau, as can be judged by its shadow.

 

Although it is said that the NASA scientist who examined the photographs received from the Viking 1 Orbiter on July 25, 1976, “almost fell out of his chair” when he saw this frame and that appropriate “Oh, my God” or expressions to that effect were uttered, the fact is that the photograph was filed away with the thousands of other Viking photographs without any further action because the similarity to a human face was deemed just a play of light and shadows on a rock eroded by natural forces (water, wind).

 

Indeed, when some newsmen who happened to see the transmitted image wondered whether it in fact showed a human face, the chief scientist of the Mission asserted that another photograph, taken a few hours later, did not show such a feature at all.

 

(Years later NASA acknowledged that that was an incorrect and misleading statement and an unfortunate one, because the fact was that the area fell into darkness of night “a few hours later” and there did exist other photographs clearly showing the Face.)

 

Three years later Vincent DiPietro, an electrical engineer and imaging specialist, who remembered seeing the “Face” in a popular magazine, came face-to-face with the Martian image as he was thumbing through the archives of the National Space Science Data Center. The Viking photo, bearing the catalog number 76-A-593/17384, was simply titled “HEAD.” Intrigued by the decision to keep the photo in the scientific data center under that tantalizing caption—the “Head” whose very existence had been denied—he embarked, together with Greg Molenaar, a Lockheed computer scientist, on a search for the original NASA image.

 

They found not one but two, the other being image 070-A-13 (Plate F). Subsequent searches came up with more photos of the Cydonia area taken by different Viking Orbiter cameras and from both the right and left sides of the features (there are eleven by now). The Face as well as more pyramidlike and other puzzling features could be seen on all of them. Using sophisticated computer enhancement and imaging techniques, DiPietro and Molenaar obtained enlarged and clearer images of the Face that convinced them it had been artificially sculpted.


Armed with their findings, they attended the 1981 The Case for Mars conference but instead of acclaiming them the assembled scientists cold-shouldered their assertions—undoubtedly because they would have to draw the conclusion that the Face was the handiwork of intelligent beings, “Martians” who had inhabited the planet; and that was a totally unacceptable proposition.


Publishing their findings privately (Unusual Mars Surface Features) DiPietro and Molenaar took great pains to dissociate themselves from “wild speculations” regarding the origin of the unusual features. All they claimed, the book’s epilogue stated, was “that the features do not seem natural and warrant further investigation.”

Plate F

 

NASA scientists, however, strongly rejected any suggestion that future missions should include a visit to the Face, since it was clearly just a rock shaped by the forces of nature so that it resembled a human face.


The cause of the Face on Mars was thereafter taken up primarily by Richard C. Hoagland, a science writer and onetime consultant at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He organized a computer conference titled The Independent Mars Investigation Team with the purpose of having the features and all other pertinent data studied by a representative group of scientists and specialists; the group eventually included Brian O’Leary, a scientist-astronaut, and David Webb, a member of the U.S. President’s Space Commission. In their conclusions they not only concurred with the view that the “Face” and “pyramids” were artificial structures, they also suggested that other features on (he surface on Mars were the handiwork of intelligent beings who had once been on Mars.

 

I was especially intrigued by the suggestion in their reports that the orientation of the Face and the principal pyramid indicated they were built about half a million years ago in alignment with sunrise at solstice time on Mars. When Hoagland and his colleague Thomas Rautenberg, a computer specialist, sought my comments on their photographic evidence, I pointed out to them that the Anunnaki/Nefilim, according to my conclusions in The 12th Planet, had first landed on Earth about 450,000 years ago; it was, perhaps, no coincidence that Hoagland and Rautenberg’s dating of the monuments on Mars coincided with my timetable. Although Hoagland was careful to hedge his bets, he did devote many pages in his book The Monuments of Mars to my writings and to the Sumerian evidence concerning the Anunnaki.


The publicity accorded the findings of DiPietro, Molenaar, and Hoagland has caused NASA to insist that they were wrong. In an unusual move, the National Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which supplies the public with copies of NASA data, has been enclosing along with the “Face” photographs copies of rebuttals of the unorthodox interpretations of the images.

 

These rebuttals include a three-page paper dated June 6, 1987, by Paul Butterworth, the Center’s Resident Planetologist. He states that “there is no reason to believe that this particular mountain, which is similar to tens of thousands of others on the planet, is not the result of the natural geological processes which have produced all the other landforms on Mars. Among the huge numbers of mountains on Mars it is not surprising that some should remind us of more familiar objects, and nothing is more familiar than the human face. I am still looking for the ‘Hand on Mars’ and the “Leg on Mars’!”


“No reason to believe” that the feature is other than natural is, of course, not a factual argument in disproving the opposite position, whose proponents contend that they do have reason to believe the features are artificial structures. Still, it is true that on Earth there are hills or mountains that give the appearance of a sculpted human or animal head although they are the work of nature alone. This, I feel, might well be a valid argument regarding the “pyramids” on the Elysium plateau or the “Inca City.” But the Face and some features near it, especially those with straight sides, remain a challenging enigma.


A scientifically significant study by Mark J. Carlotto, an optics scientist, was published in the May 1988 issue of the prestigious journal Applied Optics. Using computer graphic techniques developed in optical sciences, Carlotto employed four frames from NASA images, taken by the Viking Orbiter with different cameras during four different orbits, to recreate a three-dimensional representation of the Face.

 

The study provided detailed information about the complex optical procedures and mathematical formulations of the three-dimensional analysis, and Carlotto’s conclusions were that the “Face” was indeed a bisymmetrical human face, with another eye socket in the shaded part and a,

“fine structure of the mouth suggesting teeth.”

 

These, Carlotto stated, “were facial features and not a transient phenomenon” or a trick of light and shadow.

 

“Although the Viking data are not of sufficient resolution to permit the identification of possible mechanisms of origin for these objects, the results to date suggest that they may not be natural.””

Applied Optics deemed the study important enough to make it its front-cover feature, and the scientific journal New Scientist devoted a special report to the published paper and to an interview with its author. The journal echoed his suggestion that “at the very least these enigmatic objects”—the Face and the adjoining pyramidal features that some had dubbed “The City”—“deserve further scrutiny by future Mars probes, such as the 1988 Soviet Phobos mission or the U.S. Mars Observer.”

 

The fact that the controlled Soviet press has published and republished articles by Vladimir Avinksy, a noted researcher in geology and mineralogy, that support the non-natural origin of the monuments, surely indicates the Soviet aerospace attitudes on the matter—a subject that will be dealt with at greater length later on. Noteworthy here are two points made by Dr. Avinsky.

  • He suggests (in published articles and privately delivered papers) that in considering the enormous size of the Martian formations, one must bear in mind that due to the low gravity of Mars a man could perform gigantic tasks on it

  • He attaches great importance to the dark circle that is clearly seen in the flat area between the Face and the pyramids

While NASA scientists dismissed it as “a water spot on the lens of the Viking Orbiter,” Avinsky considers it “the centre of the entire composition” of the “Martian complex” and its layout (Fig. 86).

Figure 86


Unless it is assumed that Earthlings possessed, tens of thousands or even half a million years ago, a high civilization and a sophisticated technology that enabled them to engage in space travel, arrive on Mars and, among other things, put up monuments on it, including the Face, only two other alternatives logically remain. The first is that intelligent beings had evolved on Mars who not only could engage in megalithic construction but also happened to look like us.

 

But in the absence even of microorganisms in the soil of Mars, nor evidence of plant and animal life that among other things could provide the humanlike Martians with nourishment, the rise of a Martian population akin to Earthlings and one that even duplicated the structural forms found on Earth seems highly improbable. The only remaining plausible alternative is that someone, neither from Earth nor from Mars, capable of space travel half a million years ago, had visited this part of the Solar System and had stayed; and then left behind monuments, both on Earth and on Mars.

 

The only beings for which evidence has been found—in the Sumerian and biblical texts and in all the ancient “mythologies’” — are the Anunnaki from Nibiru. We know how they looked: they looked like us because they made us look like them, in their image and after their likeness, to quote Genesis.


Their humanlike visages appear in countless ancient depictions, including the famous Sphinx at Giza (Fig. 87). Its face, according to Egyptian inscriptions, was that of Horem-Akhet, the “Falcon-god of the Horizon,” an epithet for Ra, the firstborn son of Enki, who could soar to the farthest heavens in his Celestial Boat.


The Giza Sphinx was so oriented that its gaze was aligned precisely eastward along the thirtieth parallel toward the spaceport of the Anunnaki in the Sinai Peninsula. The ancient texts attributed communications functions to the Sphinx (and the purported subterranean chambers under it):

A message is sent from heaven; it is heard in Heliopolis and is repeated in Memphis by the Fair of Face.
It is composed in a dispatch by the writing of Thoth with regard to the city of Amen...

Figure 87

 

The gods are acting according to command. The reference to the message-transmitting role of the “Fair of Face”—the sphinx at Giza—raises the question of what the purpose of the Face on Mars was; for, if it was indeed the handiwork of intelligent beings, then by definition they did not expend the time and effort to create the Face without a logical reason. Was the purpose, as the Egyptian text suggests, to send the “message from Heaven” to the sphinx on Earth, a “command” according to which the gods acted, sent from one Face to another Fair-of-Face?

 

If such was the purpose of the Face on Mars, then one would indeed expect to find pyramids nearby, as one finds at Giza; there, three unique and exceptional pyramids, one smaller and two colossal, rise in symmetry with each other and with the Sphinx. Interestingly, Dr. Avinsky discerns three true pyramids in the area adjoining the Face on Mars.


As the ample evidence presented in the volumes of “The Earth Chronicles” series indicates, the Giza pyramids were not the handiwork of Pharaohs but were constructed by the Anunnaki. Before the Deluge their spaceport was in Mesopotamia, at Sippar (“Bird City”). After the Deluge the spaceport was located in the Sinai Peninsula, and the two great pyramids of Giza, two artificial mountains, served as beacons for the Landing Corridor whose apex was anchored on Mount Ararat, the Near East’s most visible natural feature. If this was also the function of the pyramids in the Cydonia area, then some correlation with that most conspicuous natural feature on Mars, Olympus Mons, might eventually be found.

 

When the principal center of gold production by the Anunnaki shifted from southeast Africa to the Andes, their metallurgical center was established on the shores of Lake Titicaca, at what is nowadays the ruins of Tiahuanacu and Puma-Punku. The principal structures in Tiahuanacu, which was connected to the lake by canals, were the “pyramid” called Akapana, a massive mound engineered to process ores, and the Kalasasaya, a square, “hollowed-out” structure (Fig. 88) that served astronomical purposes; its orientation was aligned with the solstices. Puma-Punku was situated directly on the lakeshore; its principal structures were “golden enclosures” built of immense stone blocks that stood alongside an array of zigzagging piers (Fig. 89).

Figure 88


Of the unusual features the orbiting cameras captured on the face of Mars, two appear to me to be almost certainly artificial—and both seem to emulate structures found on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Andes. One, which is akin to the Kalasasaya, is the first feature west of the Face on Mars, just above (north of) the mysterious darkish circle (see Plate E above).


As an enlargement thereof indicates (Plate G below), its still-standing southern part consists of two distinct massive walls, perfectly straight, meeting at an angle that appears sharp because of the photographic angle but is in fact a true right angle. The structure—which could not possibly be natural no matter how far the imagination is stretched—appears to have collapsed, in its northern part, under the impact of a huge boulder that dropped on it in some catastrophic circumstances.

Figure 89


Plate G


The other feature that could not be the product of natural erosion is found directly south of the Face, in an area of chaotic features, some of which have amazingly straight sides (Plate H). Separated by what might have been a channel or waterway—all are agreed that the area was on the shores of an ancient Martian sea or lake—the prominent feature’s side that faces the channel is not straight but is outfitted with a series of “indentations” (Plate H).

Plate H

 

One must keep in mind that all these photographs were taken from an altitude of about one thousand two hundred miles above the Martian surface; what we observe, then, may well have been an array of large piers just as one finds at Puma-Punku.


The two features, which cannot be explained away as the result of the play of light and shadow, thus bear similarities to the facilities and structures on the shores of Lake Titicaca.


In this they not only support my suggestion that they are the remains of structures put up by the same visitors—the Anunnaki—they also offer a hypothesis for explaining their purpose and possible function.


This conclusion is further supported by features that can be seen in the Utopia area: a pentagonal structure (enhanced NASA frame 086-A-07) and a “runway” next to what some deem evidence of mining (NASA frame O86-A-O8)—Plates I and J.

Plate I                                                                                               Plate J
 

The spaceports of the Anunnaki on Earth, judging by Sumerian and Egyptian records, consisted of,

  • a Mission Control Center

  • Landing Beacons

  • an underground silo

  • a large, flat plain whose natural surface served as runways

The Mission Control Center and certain Landing Beacons were some distance away from the spaceport proper where the runways were situated; when the spaceport was in the Sinai Peninsula, Mission Control Center was in Jerusalem and the Landing Beacons were in Giza, Egypt (the underground silo in the Sinai is depicted in Egyptian tomb drawings—see vignette at end of this chapter—and was destroyed by nuclear weapons in 2024 B.C.).

 

In the Andes, the Nazca lines, I believe, represent the visual evidence for the use of that perfect, arid plain as runways for space shuttle takeoffs and landings. The inexplicable crisscrossing lines on the surface of Mars, the so called “tracks” (see Fig. 81) could well represent the same kind of evidence.


There are also what appear to be true tracks on the Martian surface. From the air they look like the markings made by a pointed object on a linoleum floor, more or less straight “scratches” left on the Martian plain. These markings have been explained away as geological features, that is, natural cracks in the Martian surface.

 

But as can be seen in NASA frame 651-A-06 (Plate K), the “cracks,” or tracks, appear to lead from an elevated structure of a geometric design with straight sides and pierlike “teeth” on one side—a structure now mostly buried under windblown sands—to the shores of what evidently was once a lake.

Plate K

 

Other aerial photographs (Fig. 90) show some tracks on an escarpment above the great canyon in the Valles Marineris near the Martian equator; these tracks not only follow the contours of the terrain but also crisscross each other in a pattern that could hardly be natural.


It has been pointed out that if an alien spacecraft were to search for signs of life on Earth in areas of the Earth’s surface outside the cities, what would give away the presence of intelligent beings on Earth would be the tracks we call “roads” and the rectilinear patterns of agricultural lands. NASA itself has supplied what might amount to evidence of deliberate agricultural activity on Mars.

Frame 52-A-35 (Plate L) shows a series of parallel grooves resembling contoured farmland—as one would find in the high mountains of Peru’s Sacred Valley. The photo caption prepared by the NASA News Center in Pasadena, California. When the photograph was released on August 18, 1976, stated thus:

Peculiar geometric markings, so regular that they appear almost artificial can be seen in this Mars picture taken by Viking Orbiter 1 on August 12 from a range of 2053 kilometers (1273 miles).

The contoured markings are in a shallow depression or basin, possibly formed by wind erosion. The markings—about one kilometer (one-half mile) from crest to crest—are low ridges and valleys and may be related to the same erosion process.
The parallel contours look very much like an aerial view of plowed ground meaning conveyed information regarding the named person or object. One epithet for Mars was Simug, meaning “smith,” honoring the god Nergal with whom the planet was associated in Sumerian times.

 

A son of Enki, he was in charge of African domains that included the gold-mining areas. Mars was also called UTU.KA.GAB.A, meaning “Light Established at the Gate of the Waters,” which can be interpreted either as its position next to the asteroid belt that separated the Lower Waters from the Upper Waters, or as a source of water for the astronauts as they passed beyond the more hazardous and less hospitable giant planets Saturn and Jupiter.

 

Even more interesting are Sumerian planetary lists that describe the planets as the Anunnaki passed them during a space journey to Earth. Mars was called MUL APIN—“Planet Where the- Right Course is Set.” It was so named also on an amazing circular tablet which copied nothing less than a route map for the journey from Nibiru to Earth by Enlil, graphically showing the “right turn” at Mars.


Even more enlightening as to what role Mars, or the space facilities upon it, had played in the journeys of the Anunnaki to Earth is the Babylonian text concerning the Akitu festival. Borrowed from ancient Sumerian traditions, it outlined the rituals and symbolic procedures during the ten days of the New Year ceremonies. In Babylon the principal deity who took over the supremacy from the earlier ones was Marduk; part of the transfer of the supremacy to him was the renaming by the Babylonians of the Planet of the Gods from the Sumerian Nibiru to the Babylonian Marduk.


The Akitu ceremonies included a reenactment by Marduk of the voyages of the Anunnaki from Nibiru/Marduk to Earth. Each planet passed on the way was symbolized by a way station along the course of the religious processions, and the epithet for each planet or way station expressed its role, appearance, or special features. The station/planet Mars was termed “The Traveler’s Ship,” and I have taken it to mean that it was at Mars that the astronauts and cargo coming from Nibiru transferred to smaller spacecraft in which they were transported to Earth (and vice versa), coming and going between Mars and Earth not once in three thousand six hundred years but on a more frequent schedule.

 

Nearing Earth, these transporters linked up with the Earth orbiting station(s) manned by the Igigi; the actual landing on and takeoff from Earth were performed by smaller shuttlecraft that glided down to the natural “runways’ “ and took off by soaring upward as they increased power. Planners of the forthcoming steps into space by Mankind envision almost the same sequence of different vehicles as the best way to overcome the constraints of Earth’s gravity, making use of the weightlessness of the orbiting station and the lower gravity of Mars (and, in their plans, also of the Moon). In this, once again, modern science is only catching up with ancient knowledge.


Coupled with these ancient texts and depictions, the photographic data from the surface of Mars, and the similarities between the Martian structures and those on Earth erected by the Anunnaki all lead to one plausible conclusion:

Mars, some time in its past, was the site of a space base.

And there is also evidence suggesting that the ancient space base has been reactivated—in our very own time, in these very days.



A DRAWING THAT DREW ATTENTION


When the Egyptian viceroy Huy died, his tomb was decorated with scenes of his life and work as governor of Nubia and the Sinai during the reign of the renowned Pharaoh Tut-Ankh-Amen. Among the drawings was that of a rocketship with its shaft in an underground silo and its conical command module above ground, among palm trees and giraffes. The drawing, which was reproduced in The 12th Planet together with a comparable Sumerian pictograph of a spacecraft that designated the Anunnaki, caught the eye of Stuart W. Greenwood, an aerospace engineer then conducting research for NASA.

 

Writing in Ancient Skies (July-August 1977), a publication of the Ancient Astronaut Society, he found in the ancient drawing aspects indicating knowledge of a sophisticated technology and drew attention in particular to four “highly suggestive features”:

(1) the “airfoil cross section surrounding the rocket,” which appears suitable for “the walls of a duct used for the development of thrust”

(2) The rocket head above ground, reminiscent of the Gemini space capsule even to the appearance of the windows,

(3) the charred surface and blunt end

(4) the unusual spike, which is like spikes tested by NASA for reducing the drag on the space capsule without success, but which in the drawing suggests it was retractable and thus could overcome the overheating problem that NASA was unable to solve (click below image)

He estimated that,

“if the relative locations of the rocket-head and shaft shown in the drawing are those applying during operation within the atmosphere, the inclined shock wave from the nose of the rocket-head would touch the duct ‘lip’ at about Mach-3 (3 times the speed of sound).”

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