By Richard C. Hoagland
© 2006 The Enterprise Mission

Here we go again ….

This Friday afternoon (1:52 PM Pacific; 4:52 PM Eastern), March 10, 2006, NASA successfully inserted its latest spacecraft into Martian orbit – a two and a half ton, $720 million dollar unmanned probe, dubbed “Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter” (MRO).

Billed in the official NASA press kit as carrying “the most powerful telescopic camera ever sent to a foreign planet …” ( a most curious turn of phrase …), MRO -- after a 27-minute, high-risk deceleration burn of its on-board rocket system – was successfully slowed enough from its high-speed interplanetary approach, for Martian gravity to capture it in a long, elliptical 35-hour orbit – ranging from a low point of about 250 miles above the Martian surface, to a high point of over 27,000 miles (below).

Over the next 6 months – from March to October, 2006 – the new spacecraft will be guided via remote control (from NASA’s interplanetary control center, located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Southern California), through hundreds of repeated, delicate, celestial mechanics maneuvers called “aerobraking passes” – each designed to slow MRO down minutely -- by allowing it to lose energy via the friction of repeated “aerobraking” flights through Mars ultra-thin upper atmosphere. These carefully controlled dips into the Martian stratosphere will ultimately shrink the initial, highly elliptical MRO “capture” orbit of March 10th (above) – from some 27,000 miles above Mars, down to a 158-mile by 199-mile, 2-hour, near circular polar orbit around Mars in October, 2006 (below).

Official science observations with the new spacecraft -- from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment; the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars; the Context Camera; the Mars Color Imager; the Mars Climate Sounder; the Atmospheric Structure Investigation; the Gravity Investigation; and the Shallow Subsurface Radar, as well as three additional “technological demonstrations” acquiring data for future unmanned missions -- will begin on or about November 8th … from that unprecedented close-in orbit.

This final MRO science orbit will, in fact, be the lowest ever established for any NASA Martian spacecraft (the still functioning Mars Surveyor and Mars Odyssey missions are at much higher altitudes than MRO’s planned final height – currently approximately 250 miles above the planet). The primary reason for this unique MRO orbit is to take full advantage of the most powerful science instrument on-board, in fact, the most powerful instrument ever sent to Mars – a 20-inch diameter telescope and associated CCD camera, the heart of MRO’s “High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE).

From this close polar orbit, sweeping around Mars once every two hours at an average altitude of less than 180 miles, by the end of the nominal two-year MRO Science Mission, approximately 1% of the Martian surface will have been imaged in high resolution by the HiRISE telescope/camera. “High resolution” in this case really means something: less than 12-inch pixel resolution! Or (for a “three-pixel object identification criteria”), an average resolution of individual objects on the Martian surface of less than three feet across!

This is a factor of two better than the latest, adjusted down-track Mars Surveyor imaging. And about five times better than any previous “extended imaging” by any preceding Martian spacecraft -- all according to the official NASA MRO arrival press kit.

Here (below) is a sample of what the HiRISE telescope seems capable of doing: an image of the Moon, taken from about 6 million miles away, as MRO was leaving the Earth-Moon System for Mars. The shot was acquired September 8, 2005 for “calibration purposes,” looking back at the crescent lunar disc. The large, distinctly hexagonal feature on the right is the well-known Mare Crisium ….

So, what is NASA planning to “shoot” on the Martian surface with this unprecedented NRO-quality “spy camera” at Mars …?

The usual:

Rocks … followed by more rocks … then … entire fields of rocks ….

Or, in “NASA-ese” ….

“…researchers will use the high-resolution camera to examine shapes of deposits and other land forms produced by geologic and climatic processes … Other anticipated targets include gullies, dunes and patterned ground ...”

“Paired images of top-priority target areas taken from slightly different angles during different orbits will yield three-dimensional views revealing differences in height as small as 5 centimeters (10 inches) [sic] ….”

Catch that caveat “… top-priority targets.”

Translation: top-priority NASA targets … for another tax-payer-funded mission to the Planet Mars which, based on our experience of the last 30 years, is again not going to show us what’s important after it arrives … unless we politically demand it.

* * *

Let’s face it -- for the last three decades, NASA has effectively stonewalled the American people … and the World … on the greatest story in history … or, more appropriately, in pre-history.

Since those bombshell Viking images in 1976 of a place called “Cydonia” on Mars – with its haunting, mile-wide 1500-foot-high “Face” staring up from the deserted Martian sands a thousand miles below -- those who have followed this extraordinary story have basically divided into two very distinct camps:

The folks who think the whole idea of “a former, extremely advanced ‘lost civilization’ on the planet Mars” is obviously nuts … like this customer reviewer on Amazon, of the 5th Edition of my book on these last 30 years, “The Monuments of Mars”:

“He is full of bunk. It is a good thing I did not have to pay for this ‘Science Fiction’, and not
good fiction. You want to pull your own teeth out. Full of holes.”

And then -- the rest of us … like this other Amazon reviewer—

“I read some of the negative reviews here at Amazon, and they all struck me as inane drivel of the highest degree. If you're going to agree or disagree with any thesis you have to show why. If all you're going to come up with is name-calling and arguments about "math in cereal" (!!!, man, give us a break), or other, even worse, ‘arguments,’ like ‘NASA says it ain’t no face and that's what I believe,’ you're, in my mind, absolutely and positively hopeless. If, in the end, NASA and any institution of that order is for you a credible source, why bother thinking? Turn your brain OFFICIALLY off and let whomever, may that be NASA or anybody else, program it for you. Why read what Hoagland or a number of other researchers out there profess?

“‘The Monuments Of Mars’ is a book for people who are keen of doing something rare: think for
themselves. In order to do that, you need to entertain whatever available notion is out there, even if it
totally comes in conflict with the definition of the world in your mind. Especially if such a notion is well
argued and has been hardly refuted with adequacy.

“For those not familiar with what's presented in this book, here's a very ( and I mean, very) short
summary: Hoagland, along with a team of scientists ranging anywhere from geologists to physicists to
computer programmers who [process] photos, to historians and other specialties, analyzed a vast series of photographs taken by NASA of the Cydonia region in Mars, photos in which the infamous “Face” appears, along with other clearly geometrical features such as pyramids or the clear designs of a former city. All these features, and their undisputed geometry, one would have to be either blind not to see, or terminally brainwashed.

“The only question which remained, was to first verify through statistical probability what the odds were of these features having been made ‘naturally’. The odds are so staggeringly low that it would be a travesty to dismiss these as natural creations. The next, and more important questions, have to do with ‘who made them and why.’

“Why resort to odds when we could have more and clearer photographs of these features, so the matter could be put to rest? Well, that's just it (especially for the naysayers), because NASA refuses to
re-photograph the region with a high-resolution camera, saying ‘there's nothing there to be seen.’ And
that despite all the ‘noise’ about these features. Mysterious if not downright conspiratorial? Yes,
obviously and undoubtedly so.

“I don't intend to go more into what Hoagland says. You can pretty much imagine in broad lines, and
besides it's your decision and your inclination whether you'll invest the effort in reading his book anyway. To me, if your inclination is beforehand negative, you would've easily fit into a past world [where people] thought the world is flat because the church or ‘scientists’ say so. And I could list a high number of such embarrassing examples; there's no shortage of them, nor will there ever be.

“As to the book itself, it is one which is incredibly researched. The degree of scholarship in it is superb, and more importantly, it is not the work of ONE person. Hoagland did not sit down and think all this up as some would like the case to be. There's a vast array of people who worked with him from the scientific community and who agree with him. There's also a number of other researchers who did NOT research this subject but yet came to the same conclusions with him. Sitchin would be one. Robert Temple would be another. And the list does go on you know, as any search on alternative archaeology in Amazon or elsewhere would show you.

“The fact that we know only 5000-7000 years of human history, when this planet numbers over [billions of years] of existence, means that we are actually in the dark about our origins. At least as far as ‘mainstream science’ is concerned, and this is a fact they accept themselves while offering us all kinds of comical explanations and tons of ‘missing links’ in the process. The truth might be in fact very simple, that is, simple if you actually realize that the Universe is very probably bursting with intelligent life, not only now, but for millions of years in the past, and that the chance that we are in very intriguing ways connected with the ‘out there’ is also nothing shocking. It only is if you allow the world in your mind to be something painfully small.

“Only reading this book will more than likely not be enough to provide you with all the data supporting
such theories. Yes I mean data, and not speculations. Raw data. You will need to pick up some Sitchin, some Temple, some Colin Wilson, or others. Only then will you able to form a more spherical and stronger opinion.

“But if you haven't done so up to now, Hoagland's book is a great place to start. Absolutely essential
material for people not content with the hilarious version of the truth spoon-fed to us on a daily basis ….”

This last critique obviously represents the folks who, on examining all the scientific evidence developed over these last three decades regarding our “Martian Intelligence Hypothesis” … have come to radically differing conclusions from both the unthinking followers of “mainstream science” … if not the folks at NASA.

For NASA, of course, officially maintains that our ideas -- and the decades of accumulated multi-disciplinary evidence presented to support them -- are lacking both in evidence and any “science’ ….

Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth … as anyone objectively examining just the most recent Cydonia images can easily observe.

This example (below) was taken by NASA’s unmanned Mars Odyssey mission in late 2003: an eastern-illuminated image of the Face (after more than 20 years of only photos taken with the Sun coming from the west) -- revealing both an astonishing “luminosity,” as well as remarkable rectilinear geometry … all along the eastern half ….

This pre-sunrise NASA view is such an obvious embarrassment to those who have insisted for so long that this iconic Cydonia feature is “just a natural pile of rocks,” that it has been resolutely ignored by the naysayers ever since its acquisition. This, despite our own publication of a detailed analysis here at Enterprise (“The Light Finally Dawns at Cydonia ….”) for why this “pre-dawn image” is now so scientifically revealing ….

For, such abnormal, selective reflectivity – to say nothing of the obvious regular geometry blatantly visible all across the eastern side, as well as obvious color differences with other features right next door – cannot any longer be “explained” in terms of “natural Martian mesas” ….

When you composite this eastern-illuminated Odyssey image with a black-and-white western-lit Mars Surveyor view (acquired in 2001 -- below), and examine carefully the combined symmetry of the Face “platform,” the aligned nature of the “highly reflective geometry” with the centerline of the larger Face itself, and the repeating symmetry of other key features, east and west -- any further comparisons with “natural mesas” becomes blatantly absurd ….

This is a mega-work of ET engineering ….

Whose “protected” eastern side is apparently still exhibiting remnants of its original “anomalous composition and construction!”

The fact that over a decade earlier, Mark Carlotto and Mike Stein (then employed by The Analytical Science Corporation -- a Defense Department contract company), quietly conducted a major “fractal analysis” of this same object -- using computer algorithms later used (successfully!) for the first time in the 1991 Gulf War for the detection of Sadham Hussein’s tanks against the natural background of the highly similar Saudi deserts (below) -- and found that the Face is “the more non-fractal (‘unnatural’) than a Hussein tank” … is finally explained by this remarkable Odyssey pre-dawn Face image; for, it is now strikingly apparent that significant sections of the Face’s formerly highly manufactured (and still reflective) geometric surface … are still in place ….

This crucial view of the highly-reflective geometry still present on the Face’s eastern side (below) was acquired with only 20-meter-per-pixel resolution (~800 inches). Imagine what the MRO HiRISE camera – at 12 inches per pixel (!) … 66 times greater resolution than Mars Odyssey ... and in color no less -- could now confirm about this object ....

If NASA will only take the proper multi-spectral images… and at the proper time of day… during the two-year MRO Mission!!

* * *

Which brings us to: why not?

Why has the scientific prospect of Cydonia, the potential for the confirmation of a bonafide ET civilization once living in the same solar system as ourselves, been met with such vitriol and outright opposition … by tax-payer supported personnel working directly for NASA, supposedly the American Space Agency representing all American scientific points of view? Why has there not been one peer-reviewed scientific paper, published in any scientific literature, analyzing Cydonia objectively … or, providing substantive, evidentiary refutation of the “Intelligence Hypothesis” itself ... in more than 30 years?

Why has the entire “campaign” against Cydonia and the genuine existence of its mile-wide monuments, been relegated to the realm of “name calling” of the key independent researchers … and outright lies about the evidence?!

Why …?

Because, the “fix” is in ….

Mars is, indeed, the “Forbidden Planet” of the solar system … as we shall demonstrate.

In 2000, we published on Enterprise the first hard evidence (“Planets, Hyperdimensional Physics -- and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet?! Or, What Did They Know, and When Did They Know it?”) indicating that “someone” somehow knew of “Cydonia” and “tetrahedrons on Mars” long before we ever went to space! A series of color “View Master” reels (below), loaned to us in 1992 – originally produced as a pilot in the 1950’s for the CBS hit television series, “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” -- revealed stunning details of our own Cydonia investigation, first published in 1987 in “The Monuments of Mars” and here at Enterprise—

But… some forty years before our published work!!

These included finding “ruins on the Moon”; “tetrahedrons” as the key to a new Physics; “feline” statues on the planet Mars; ... and even an “exploded planet” as the genesis of the current Asteroid Belt … where the “precursor race” which left the ruins at Cydonia on Mars actually originated ….

Critics, of course, immediately rushed to dismiss this astonishing new evidence as merely “a series of coincidences.”

In fact, the odds are millions-to-one against assembling all these separate, inherently unconnected “pieces” into a coherent “Martian story” … which we ourselves only figured out two decades after the production of this set ….

Unless, way back then … someone also knew!

Now we have found additional, even more remarkable evidence supporting this extraordinary scenario: that “someone” -- decades before they went to Cydonia and found it -- somehow knew what NASA in 1976 would discover as “the Face on Mars!”

The cover (reproduced below) is from a September, 1958, Harvey Comic book series, Issue #2, entitled “Race For the Moon.” The EERIELY PREDICTIVE blurb (Moon ... Mars, anyone?) says it all:

“REPORT FROM MOON TO MARS EXPEDITION ‘1’:

“UPON REACHING RED PLANET, MADE DISCOVERY OF STARTLING NATURE …
INITIAL STUDY OF OBJECT NOW UNDER WAY; HAVE MEASURED ITS
DIMENSIONS; ANALYZED ITS SUBSTANCE; PRESENT OBJECTIVE IS TO FIND
OUT THE SECRET OF—

“THE FACE ON MARS ….”

This is only one story in this prescient compilation, written (and drawn) by the so-called “King” of comics from the 1950’s to the 1970’s, the inimitable Jack Kirby. Kirby wrote this amazingly prophetic tale only eleven months after the Space Age officially began -- with the surprising Russian launch of Sputnik 1, October 4, 1957--

But -- eighteen years before the rest of us would see (from Viking 1) what was waiting for the Human Race on Mars ….

“FROM THE MOON TO THE RED PLANET! – WHERE YOU WILL SEE THE GREAT
EYES THAT LOOK OUT ACROSS THE AGES! AND THEY HAVE A STORY TO
TELL! LISTEN TO THE GIANT—

“FACE ON MARS.”

So, in 1958 … how did Kirby know?!

The synopsis from Kirby’s “Face on Mars” holds the crucial clues:

“The Face On Mars”, penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Al Williamson. – On an expedition from the
Earth’s moon to the planet Mars, an international team of astronauts – led by American Ben Fisher –
discover a huge carving of a Martian face – that’s as big as a mountain! Ascending to the inscrutable
statue’s hollow eyes, Fisher plunges inside, where he finds a green, sunlit countryside with cool, rich and breathable air, one which shelters a civilization of ‘magnificent giants.’ Suddenly, the otherworldly city is attacked by insect-like airborne craft, which bomb the giant’s homeland into ruins. Outraged, Fisher blasts away at the potato-like invaders who emerge from the landing aircraft, offering them a taste of their own ‘medicine.’ Appalled by the wanton destruction, Fisher eventually locates a hidden stronghold of the surviving members of the race of Martian giants. As he eavesdrops, the Earthman sees one of them pilot a rocket to destroy their enemy’s home base, an unknown planet located somewhere between Mars and Jupiter! Suddenly, Fisher begins to gasp for breath! Blacking out as he falls into oblivion, Fisher eventually awakens on the floor of the Martian desert, with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, while his expedition-mates hover over him. Fisher explains that the statue [the Face on Mars] contains ‘a visual history of a race’s heroic death – and the triumph of a surviving memory’. Later, as they pilot their rocket to Jupiter, to Earth, Fisher and his team take careful notice of the debris-strewn asteroid belt – ‘the pieces of a planet that blew up between Mars and Jupiter ….’”

As does an actual set of panels from this remarkable comic book itself:

So, how does a lowly “comic artist” in the 1950’s become privy to the Greatest Secret in the History of Man … before it could be known?!

One reasonable possibility is that Jack Kirby somehow saw the same View Master reels from “Tom Corbett: Space Cadet” that we were loaned -- only much, much earlier. However, this cannot be the answer ... because the Corbett reels – while containing much extraordinary information relating to Cydonia we have verfied five decades later – did NOT contain a single mention of “a giant face on Mars!”

So -- if he didn’t get his information from “Tom Corbett,” regarding “ruins of an ancient, war-torn civilization on the planet Mars … presided over by a giant head …” -- how did Jack Kirby know about “the Face!?

The answers’ obvious: he was simply told.

By “who” is the key question, isn’t it? As well as “why” ….

* * *

In Part II, we’ll present additional examples – also decades before Viking -- of a now provable 1950’s “Hollywood Connection” to the wonders of “a lost civilization at Cydonia.” And, address the crucial question:

“What does any of this have to do with acquiring new HiRISE images of the Face and other structures at Cydonia from the latest NASA mission?”

That too will become obvious.

Stay tuned.

-0-

UPDATE – March 24, 2006

The first MRO image mosaic taken by the spacecraft’s 20-inch telescope/camera assembly (called “HiRISE” – for “High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment”) just came in … and it’s spectacular (see highly reduced resolution version -- below)!

Taken from 1547 miles up, this first test image is composed of ten individual frames “stiched” together at the University of Arizona’s HiRISE Operations Center … only a tease for the tens of thousands of even more spectacular MRO HiRISE images to follow in the coming months.

The small box (outlined above) shows the area of the full-resolution close-up from the mosaic also released by the HiRISE Team this morning (below). This full-resolution image was enlarged from the previous image.

Once the spacecraft has aerobraked into its final 2-hour, circular science orbit (from the highly elliptical path the spacecraft is currently following around Mars -- below), the images from the HiRISE camera should become some ten times sharper than the image above … capable of resolving individual objects less than three feet across!

The official “three-pixel, recognizable resolution” for individual objects in this current, full-res HIRISE image is a little over 30 feet ….

Even at that resolution, some fascinating details have been revealed.

To begin: examine again closely the enlargement of the full-res image released this morning by the HiRISE Team (above).

That highly peculiar “rounded feature” near the middle of the frame, right, looks distinctly like some kind of massive artificial structure … slowly being uncovered after burial a long time ago under reviously deposited sediments (note the “cliff” behind it ... also being eroded back) ….

Its overall shape, the obvious geometry on top, its juxtaposition next to a number of other, equally “geometric” features … all are suggestive of “another massive Martian ruin being slowly uncovered by the changing Martian climate” ….

Imagine images of this object with ten times this initial HiRISE resolution!

That’s what’s waiting for us on this Mission -- if we take the proper political actions to ensure that this superb camera gets aimed at the IMPORTANT features on this plane this time!

In another section of the same mosaic (from which the previous close-up was acquired), we find more geometry (below) … again, highly reminiscent of the “slow erosion of an overburden of earth covering a former, artificial complex” ….

Two strikingly “out of place features” stand out:

First: the highly geometric ruins (!!), lying in the bottom of the shallow “crater” on the right – looking for all the world like excavated Anasazi Great Houses here in the American Southwest (enlargement -- below) ….

And the equally geometric, massive single structure on the far left (enlargement – below).

Operational MRO images ten times this resolution – and in color – would allow a much better determination of these stunning possibilities ….

Stay tuned.

-0-

Part II

“‘Forbidden’ Isn’t Just a Metaphor ….”

(Coming Soon)

Join the Enterprise Conference – and Explore the Implications of This Remarkable New Discovery with Other Members of the “Enterprise Crew” ….