Group: NASA hid Martian city
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WASHINGTON (AP)
A group
that says there may have been life
on Mars suggested yesterday that
NASA may have intentionally dis-
abled the Mars Observer so it could
take no pictures of artificial struc-
tures on that planet.
Richard Hoagland, founder of a
group that claims a city once was.
built on Mars, said at a news confer-
ence that there was a possibility that
a "rogue group" within NASA inten-
tionally shut off the agency's Mars
Observer spacecraft so that it could
not make an orbital survey of the
city.
Hoagland said that he has been
trying for almost 10 years to get,
NASA to investigate what he be-
lieves is a picture of a face carved on
the surface of Mars and that scien-
tists for the agency have dismissed
his research and that of colleagues
in his organization.
He said that a study conducted 30
years ago suggests that there is a
"McCarthyesque fear of fundamen-
talists and religious fanaticism" in
NASA and that as a result the agen-
cy is reluctant to admit there is evi-
dence that intelligent life once exist-
ed on Mars.
He suggested that the agency may
want to suppress any information
about extraterrestrial life and that
this leads the agency to ridicule and
The Times
(TRENTON NJ)
8/15/1993
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"trivialize" his organization's re-
search.
"There is an inside group that
does not want this pursued. Maybe
they literally pulled the plug," Hoag-
land said.
NASA SPOKESMAN Dwayne
Brown denied that NASA was with-
holding information or that the
Mars Observer was intentionally dis-
abled.
"We are not a classified agency
and we have always been very open
with our information," he said.
Hoagland and his associates based
their whole case for life on Mars on
two photographs taken of the Mar-
tian surface by the Viking space
probe in 1976.
The photos show a mountainous
structure that with a combination of
light and shadow appears to be half
of a face.
NASA scientists have dismissed
that conclusion, arguing that what
appears to be a structure is a moun-
tain that was photographed at the
moment that sunlight and shadow
created a vague impression of a half-
face.
Hoagland and his group, however,
have subjected the image to comput-
er enhancement. They insist that its
shape and angles are consistent with
a structure built by intelligent be-
ings. It is, they suggest, a face that
was carved on the face of Mars by
creatures who once lived there.
Carrying the research further,
Hoagland and his group have rea-
soned that since the face was carved
on the planet, then there must be
other constructions nearby. In the
same pictures they found angular
uplifts which, in their scenario, they
now call pyramids.
AND SINCE there are pyramids,
then they have concluded that an-
other group of structures nearby
must be the center of a city. They
call it Cydonia for the region on
Mars where it is located.
Furthermore, since all of these
Martian structures were built by in-
telligent life, they reason, then they
must have been arranged in a pur-
poseful manner. Based on measure-
ments of angles between these ob-
jects, therefore, the group reasons
that unknown intelligent beings
once lived on Mars and carved a
message that can now be read.
But, for some reason, said Hoag-
land, NASA scientists are "trivializ-
ing" this research and "a rogue
group" may have now "pulled the
plug" on a $980 million spacecraft
that would have proven the theory.