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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Table of Contents ------------------------------------------
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U-F-NO! NASA Shoots Down Speculation Over Space Station Video -------------------------------
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Moon Photobombs Earth in New NASA Video -------
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Asteroid 2004 BL86 to Fly By Earth ------------------
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Earth’s Biodiversity Has Fallen Below ‘Safe’ Levels? Ecologists Disagree ---------------------
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One Year Later: New Horizons’ Top 10 Discoveries at Pluto -----------------------------
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Newly-Discovered Planet Has 3 Suns ----------
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Galaxies ------------------------------------------------------
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Astronaut Encounters with Aliens -------------------
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2 Mars: The Viking Era -----------------------------------------
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Back Page ----------------------------------------------------
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ANJOE D. CALAMBA MA -106 Student 2
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U-F-NO! NASA Shoots Down Speculation Over Space Station Video By Calla Cofield, Staff Writer
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here's a rumor swirling around the internet that NASA intentionally turned off a live camera on the International Space Station (ISS) after the feed showed a small object just above Earth. The suggestion (or outright accusation, by some) is that NASA is trying to cover something up — that the bright light was an alien UFO or a large piece of space debris that the agency doesn't want people to know about. Is there any truth to the rumors? Here's what we know: A bright object was visible in the video feed coming from the live camera on the ISS, and the camera cut out shortly after the object appeared (the camera came back on shortly after, and is now running as usual). But those events won't surprise anyone with a little bit of knowledge about the station cameras, because both things occur commonly. And NASA representatives have now stated very directly that the agency did not turn off the camera intentionally. It's not rare for the space station camera feeds to cut out for various reasons, including the fact that the station orbits the Earth about 16 times per day, and frequently slips out of direct contact with NASA. "The International Space Station regularly passes out of range of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) used to send and receive video, voice and telemetry from the station," representatives from NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate said in a statementpublished by the Huffington Post. "For video, whenever we
lose signal (video comes down on our higher bandwidth, called KU), the cameras will show a blue screen (indicating no signal) or a preset video slate, depending on where you are watching the feed," the statement said. Secondly, bright objects hurtle toward Earth all the time. There are space rocks burning up in the atmosphere (meteors, also known as shooting stars). Human-made
space debris can also burn up while falling through the atmosphere (space agencies monitor the larger chunks). And then there's the possibility that the bright spot as an artifact — nothing more than a reflection. "Reflections from station windows, the spacecraft structure itself or lights from Earth commonly appear as artifacts in photos and videos from the orbiting laboratory, just as reflections often appear in pictures taken on Earth," the statement said. Adding some finality to the speculation, the representatives added, "No unidentifiable objects have been seen from the ISS." While that explanation may not satisfy some people, one thing to keep in
mind when considering alleged NASA conspiracies is that "NASA" refers to a very large collection of people. Dozens of individuals monitor the activities on the space station constantly (although, as mentioned above, the station drops out of direct contact with the agency on a regular basis). This brings to mind the saying, "three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead," meaning, simply, that the more people who are in on a secret, the less likely it is to stay a secret. What's more, most of those people are scientists and engineers, professionals who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of truth. It's important to keep that information in mind when weighing the likelihood of conspiracy theories. Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Editor's Recommendations UFO Sighting? No, Just Google's 'Rogue' Balloon They Want to Believe: UFO Hunters Plan Database to Track Sightings The Truth Is Out There: CIA Publishes UFO Investigation Tips
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Moon Photobombs Earth in New NASA Video By Kacey Deamer, Staff Writer
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NASA satellite in just the right position captured a spectacular celestial photobomb — a view of the moon moving in front of the sunlit side of Earth. It is only the second time in a year that the NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, orbiting about 1 million miles (1,609,344 kilometers) away from Earth, captured the moon crossing Earth's face, resulting in a spectacular time-lapse video. "For the second time in the life of DSCOVR, the moon moved between the spacecraft and Earth,” Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. "The project recorded this event on July 5 with the same cadence and spatial resolution as the first ‘lunar photobomb’ of last year." [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit] A lt houg h DSCOVR's primary mission is to monitor solar wind in real time for the National O c e a n i c a n d At mo sphe r i c Administration ( N OA A ) , t h e satellite is a l s o known for its stunning images of E ar t h , which are captured by NASA’s E a r t h Polychromatic I m a g i n g Camera ( E P I C ) — a 4-megapixel C C D c a m e r a a n d telescope on the DSCOVR satellite. Due to DSCOVR's position between the sun and Earth, EPIC maintains a constant view of the fully illuminated Earth as it rotates on its axis. "It's surprising how much brighter Earth is than the moon," Szabo said in a statement about last year's moon images. "Our planet is a truly brilliant object in dark space compared to the lunar surface." The moon is tidally locked to Earth, so the same face is always pointing toward the planet. DSCOVR offers a unique view of the moon's far side, which can be seen when the satellite's orbit intersects the lunar orbit. 4 moon only appears between the spacecraft and Earth The two orbits intersect only four times a year, and the once or twice a year, depending on the relative orbital phases of the moon and DSCOVR, according to NASA. This latest crossing of paths was captured by combining three images taken about 30 seconds apart. EPIC uses three separate monochrome exposures — red, blue and green — to generate "natural color" images of Earth. The images were taken between July 4 at 11:50 p.m. EDT and July 5 at 3:18 a.m. EDT. The moon can be seen moving over the Indian and Pacific oceans, with the North Pole at the top of the images. Original article on Live Science.
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Asteroid 2004 BL86 to Fly By Earth
t 16:20 UTC on Monday, January 26, 2015, asteroid 2004 BL86 will fly by Earth at a distance only 3 times greater than the distance between Earth and Moon. People in North and South America, Europe and Africa will have front row seats for the event. All you will need to see this space rock is a small telescope or a pair of strong binoculars! Due to time zone differences, the event will occur on Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at locations following a time zone of UTC+8 or more. Time in my city when 2004 BL86 is closest to Earth With an approximate diameter of 0.31 miles (500 meters), 2004 BL86 will be the largest known asteroid to come this close to the Earth until August 7, 2027 when asteroid 1999 AN10 will zoom past the Earth. Thrice the Lunar According at its closest point will be around (1.2 million km) surface. This is about average distance Moon and the Earth. Moon Distance 2004 BL86 was in 2004 by the Earth Asteroid or LINEAR, a between NASA, the Air Force and the Institute of Lincoln Laboratory. C o u n t to 2004
Distance to astronomers, the asteroid 745,000 miles from the Earth’s 3.1 times the between the Calculator discovered Lincoln NearR e s e a r c h c o l l a b or at i on United States Massachusetts Te c h n o l o g y ' s BL86's
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Where and how to see 2004 BL86? 2004 BL86's close encounter will provide a rare opportunity for amateur astronomers to view the asteroid, since according to NASA, 2004 BL86 will not come this close to the Earth for the next 200 years. At its closest approach, 2004 BL86 won't be visible to the naked eye but observers with small telescopes and powerful binoculars will be able to view it. Observers in North America, South America, Europe and Africa will have the best view of the asteroid flyby. Those in East Asia and Australia will have a chance to see the asteroid, but will require stronger equipment since the asteroid will be less bright while passing over these regions. Will the weather in my city allow me to see the flyby? To view the asteroid, astronomers suggest that viewers look towards the constellations of Hydra, Cancer and Leo. Absolutely of the asteroid
Should I be worried? not! Scientists around the world have ruled out hitting the Earth – 2004 BL86 is expected to Earth
any possibility on January 26. 55
Earth’s Biodiversity Has Fallen Below ‘Safe’ Levels? Ecologists Disagree
By Bridget Alex | July 14, 2016 5:12 pm
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he study, released Thursday in Science, compiles a global dataset of biodiversity change and compares it to human land use patterns. The analysis shows that 58 percent of Earth’s land, which is home to 71 percent of the human population, has surpassed a recently proposed safe limit for biodiversity loss, beyond which ecosystems may no longer support human societies. While the news sounds dire, other ecologists contend that the very notion of setting “safe limits” is a danger in itself, and criticize this line-in-thesand approach to assessing the planet’s ecological health. In fact, critics say setting a limit may do more harm than good.
After analyzing over 2 million records of nearly 40,000 species from 20,000 sites, the authors report that on average biodiversity, as measured by BII, has fallen by 15 percent. This means most of Earth’s land and people are in areas beyond the safe limit, in the zone of uncertainty. Many species are critically threatened, and so are the services they provide humans such as pollination, decomposition, and sustenance. The “fact that we’ve lost biodiversity isn’t surprising,” says Newbold. What is surprising is “the magnitude of the change … how much of the world’s land surface has gone past the boundary.” Are We Really Past the Boundary?
The Biodiversity Safety Scale “We’re crossing into a zone of uncertainty,” says lead scientist Tim Newbold of University College London. The safe limit is defined as a 10 percent reduction in the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), a measure of population abundances across many species relative to their numbers in the preindustrial era. The measure comes from the Planetary Boundaries framework proposed in 2009 and updated in 2015, which aims to set limits on properties of Earth to ensure a “safe operating space” — that is, environmental conditions suitable for us agricultural, industrial humans. The Planetary Boundaries (PBs) are based on measurable properties for nine categories including climate change, ocean acidification and ozone depletion. For each category, scientists have tried to establish a safe zone, a zone of uncertainty and a high-risk zone. The study by Newbold and colleagues is the most comprehensive assessment to date of where we stand on the Planetary Boundary scale in terms of biodiversity. It is “really an impressive analysis bringing to bear some of the best datasets that we have,” says biologist Tom Oliver of the University of Reading, who wasn’t involved in the study.
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However, determining where the safe limit is — and how much of 6 the planet is past it — is problematic. “This thing is a house of cards … one assumption after another,” says Erle Ellis, director of the Laboratory of Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The 10 percent reduction in BII marks the beginning of a large zone of uncertainty — from 10 percent to 70 percent reduction — over which scientists cannot be sure how the Earth System will respond. One source of uncertainty is the influence of non-native species, which
can help, hurt or have no effect on a given ecosystem. The health of an ecosystem also depends on complex interactions between species serving different functions. This balance is hard to quantify, let alone in a single number, such as BII. For analogy, Ellis says, “Would you know whether your country is in good condition if you just had the GDP? GDP goes up during wars. Is that good?” An earlier study on defining the PB for biodiversity recommended consideration of at least 22 variables, stating that single measures such as BII, “are unable to reflect the key features of biodiversity important for humanity.” The PB scientists proposed BII as an “interim control variable” and Newbold admits that it “is just a provisional way of measuring pending better information.” Despite the uncertainties, Oliver praised the Newbold study, saying, “the scientists are taking a brave step in going beyond just quantifying the extent of biodiversity decline to trying to link that to the impacts on people.” Is There a Boundary? Ellis also argues that the PBs are subjective and not scientifically determined. Moreover, they send a public message that the only reason to conserve nature is for the services it provides us. “We don’t know what the safe limit is. We shouldn’t even try to find that out … Our goal is not to change the planet up to its safe limits,” says Ellis. Reporting that we have crossed the safe limit for biodiversity loss can invoke both crisis mentality and complacency with regard to environmental action. The crisis mentality can lead to extreme actions, like how the threat of terrorism has been used to justify torture, says Ellis. Alternatively, people may realize that we have passed this threshold without immediate negative consequences, and it “creates a false sense of security,” he adds.
One Year Later: New Horizons’ Top 10 Discoveries at Pluto here were you at 7:49 a.m. Horizons indicates Pluto could well system was like,” said Hal Weaver, New
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Eastern Time on July 14, 2015? Three billion miles from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, moving at speeds that would get it from New York to Los Angeles in about four minutes, was pointing cameras, spectrometers, and other sensors at Pluto and its moons – distant worlds that humankind had never seen up close – recording hundreds of pictures and other data that would forever change our view of the outer solar system. “New Horizons not only completed the era of first reconnaissance of the planets, the mission has intrigued and inspired. Who knew that Pluto would have a heart?” said NASA’s Director of Planetary Science Jim Green. “Even today, New Horizons captures our imagination, rekindles our curiosity, and reminds us of what’s possible.” To say that New Horizons shook the foundation of planetary science is an understatement— discoveries already culled from the pictures and compositional and space environment readings have not only introduced us to the Pluto system, but hint at what awaits as scientists examine other worlds in the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, lists the mission’s most surprising and amazing findings from Pluto (so far): • The complexity of Pluto and its satellites is far beyond what we expected. • The degree of current activity on Pluto’s surface and the youth of some surfaces on Pluto are simply astounding. • Pluto’s atmospheric hazes and lowerthan-predicted atmospheric escape rate upended all of the pre-flyby models. • Charon’s enormous equatorial extensional tectonic belt hints at the freezing of a former water ice ocean inside Charon in the distant past. Other evidence found by New
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have an internal water-ice ocean today. All of Pluto’s moons that can be age-dated by surface craters have the same, ancient age—adding weight to the theory that they were formed together in a single collision between Pluto and another planet in the Kuiper Belt long ago. Charon’s dark, red polar cap is unprecedented in the solar system and may be the result of atmospheric gases that escaped Pluto and then accreted on Charon’s surface. Pluto’s vast 1,000-kilometer-wide heart-shaped nitrogen glacier (informally called Sputnik Planum)
Horizons project scientist from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “But it didn’t take long for us to realize Pluto was something special, and like nothing we ever could have expected. We’ve been astounded by the beauty and complexity of Pluto and its moons and we’re excited about the discoveries still to come.” New Horizons is now nearly 300 million miles beyond Pluto, speeding to its next destination deeper into the Kuiper Belt, following NASA approval of an extended mission. About 80 percent of the data stored on the spacecraft’s recorders has been sent to Earth; transmission of the remainder will be complete by October. “Our entire team is proud to have accomplished the first exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt— something many of us had worked to achieve since the 1990s,” said Stern. “The data that New Horizons sent back about Pluto and its system of moons has revolutionized planetary science and inspired people of all ages across the world about space exploration. It’s been a real privilege to be able to do that, for which I’ll be forever indebted to our team and our nation.” Last Updated: July 14, 2016 Editor: Bill Keeter
that New Horizons discovered is the largest known glacier in the solar system. • Pluto shows evidence of vast changes in atmospheric pressure and, possibly, past presence of running or standing liquid volatiles on its surface – something only seen elsewhere on Earth, Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan in our solar system. • The lack of additional Pluto satellites beyond what was discovered before New Horizons was unexpected. • Pluto’s atmosphere is blue. Who knew? “It’s strange to think that only a year ago, we still had no real idea of what the Pluto
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Newly-Discovered Planet Has 3 Suns
f you thought Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, was a strange world with its two suns in the sky, imagine this: a planet with either constant daylight or triple sunrises and sunsets each day depending on the seasons (which last longer than human lifetimes). Such a world has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona using direct imaging. The planet, HD 131399Ab, is unlike any other known world – one with, by far, the widest known orbit within a multi-star system. The discovery will be published in an early online edition of the journal Science on July 7. Located about 340 light years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, HD 131399Ab is believed to be about 16 million years old, making it one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date. With a temperature of 850 kelvins (about 1,070 F or 580 C) and weighing in at an estimated four Jupiter masses, it is also one of the coldest and least massive directly-imaged exoplanets. "HD 131399Ab is one of the few exoplanets that have been directly imaged, and it's the first one in such an interesting dynamical configuration," said Daniel Apai, an assistant professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona. He is the principal investigator of one of NASA’s teams in the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), which is an interdisciplinary network dedicated to the search for life on planets outside our solar system. "For about half of the planet’s orbit, which lasts 550 Earth-years, three stars are visible in the sky, the fainter two always much closer together, and changing in apparent separation from the brightest star throughout the year," said Kevin Wagner, a doctoral student in Apai's research group and the paper's first author, who discovered HD 131399Ab. "For much of the planet’s year the stars appear close together, giving it a familiar night-side and day-side with a unique triple-sunset and sunrise each day. As the planet orbits and the stars grow farther apart each day, they reach a point where the setting of one coincides with the rising of the other
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– at which point the planet is in nearconstant daytime for about one-quarter of its orbit, or roughly 140 Earth-years." The planet marks the first discovery of an exoplanet made with SPHERE, which stands for the Spectro-Polarimetric HighContrast Exoplanet Research Instrument. It is installed on the Very Large Telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, and dedicated to finding planets around other stars. SPHERE is sensitive to infrared light, making it capable of detecting the heat signatures of young planets, along with sophisticated features correcting for atmospheric disturbances and blocking out
the otherwise blinding light of their host stars. Although repeated and long-term observations will be needed to precisely determine the planet's trajectory among its host stars, observations and simulations seem to suggest the following scenario: At the center of the system lies a star estimated to be 80 percent more massive than the sun 8 and dubbed HD 131399A, which itself is orbited by the two remaining stars, B and C, at about 300 AU (one AU, or astronomical unit, equals the average distance between Earth and the sun). All the while, B and C twirl around each other like a spinning dumbbell, separated by a distance roughly equal to that between our sun and Saturn. In this scenario, planet HD 131399Ab travels around the central star, A, in an orbit about twice as large as Pluto’s if compared to our solar system, and brings the planet to about one-third of
the separation of the stars themselves. The authors point out that a range of orbital scenarios is possible, and the verdict on long-term stability of the system will have to wait for planned follow-up observations that will better constrain the planet's orbit. "If the planet was further away from the most massive star in the system, it would be kicked out of the system," Apai explained. "Our computer simulations showed that this type of orbit can be stable, but if you change things around just a little bit, it can become unstable very quickly." Planets in multi-star systems are of special interest to astronomers and planetary scientists because they provide an example of how planet formation functions in these extreme scenarios. While multi-star systems seem exotic to us in our orbit around our solitary star – multi-star systems are in fact just as common as single stars. "It is not clear how this planet ended up on its wide orbit in this extreme system, and we can't say yet what this means for our broader understanding of the types of planetary systems out there, but it shows there is more variety out there than many would have deemed possible," Wagner said. "What we do know is that planets in multistar systems are much less explored, and potentially just as numerous as planets in single-star systems." “This is the kind of discovery that helps us place our own solar system in the context of the diversity of worlds beyond it, by finding systems that are much different from our own,” says Mary Voytek, senior scientist for astrobiology and program manager of the NExSS network at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By combining these results with research on the formation of habitable worlds, we will have a better understanding of the systems in which habitable worlds might form. NExSS will ensure such connections are made, within and beyond our NExSS teams.”
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Galaxies
alaxies are sprawling space systems composed of dust, gas, and countless stars. The number of galaxies cannot be counted—the observable universe alone may contain 100 billion. Some of these distant systems are similar to our own Milky Way galaxy, while others are quite different. Galaxies with less than a billion stars are considered "small galaxies." In our own galaxy, the sun is just one of about 100 billion stars. Galaxies are classified into three main types: spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, and irregular galaxies. Spiral galaxies, such as the Milky Way, consist of a flat disk with a bulging center and surrounding spiral arms. The galaxy's disk includes stars, planets, dust, and gas—all of which rotate around the galactic center in a regular manner. This spinning motion, at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second, may cause matter in the disk to take on a distinctive spiral shape like a cosmic pinwheel. Some spiral galaxies obtain even more interesting shapes that earn them descriptive names, such as sombrero galaxies. Older stars reside in the bulge at the center of the galactic disk. Many new stars also form in spiral systems, and their disks are surrounded by a halo, which scientists believe is rich with mysterious dark matter. Elliptical galaxies are shaped as their name suggests. They are generally round but stretch longer along one axis than along the other. They may be nearly circular or so elongated that they take on a cigarlike appearance. Elliptical galaxies contain many older stars, up to one trillion, but little dust and other interstellar matter. Their stars orbit the galactic center, like those in the disks of spiral galaxies, but they do so in more random directions. Few new stars are known to form in elliptical galaxies. The universe's largest known galaxies are giant elliptical galaxies, which may be as much as two million light-years long. Elliptical galaxies may also be small, in which case they are dubbed dwarf elliptical galaxies. Galaxies that are not spiral or elliptical are called irregular galaxies. Irregular galaxies appear misshapen and lack a distinct form, often because they are within the gravitational influence of other galaxies close by. Galactic Mergers Some galaxies occur alone or but they are more often parts of larger
known as groups, clusters, and superclusters. Galaxies in such groups often interact and even merge together in a dynamic cosmic dance of interacting gravity. Mergers cause gases to flow towards the galactic center, which can trigger phenomena like rapid star formation. Our own Milky Way may someday merge with the Andromeda galaxy—just two million light-years away and visible to the naked eye from Earth's Northern Hemisphere. These intergalactic processes may be part of natural evolution by which irregular galaxies transform into one of the other shapes, and by which spiral galaxies eventually become elliptical galaxies—as scientists believe they must. Galaxy Origins
M o s t astronomers suggest that galaxies f o r m e d shortly after a cosmic "big bang" that began the universe some 10 billion to 20 billion years ago. In the milliseconds following t h i s explosion, c l o u d s of gases began to coalesce, collapse, and compress under gravity to form the building blocks of galaxies. Scientists are divided on just how galaxies first formed. Some believe that smaller clusters of about one million stars, known as globular clusters, formed first and later gathered into galaxies. Others believe that galaxies formed first and that only later did the stars within them begin to gather into smaller clusters.
in pairs, associations
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AstronautorEncounters with Aliens the great American hero, Buzz Aldrin?” Moon landing and that a row of alien
ne allegedly well-documented report stems from an interview in which astronaut Buzz Aldrin describes seeing a UFO during the Apollo 11 mission. In an interview on the Science Channel (left, top), Aldrin stated that he, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins saw unidentified objects that appeared to follow their Apollo spacecraft. To get the story straight, I called Buzz Aldrin, who was happy to explain what happened. He said that his remarks were taken out of context to reverse his meaning. It is true that the Apollo 11 crew spotted an unidentified object moving with the spacecraft as they approached the Moon. After they verified that this mystery object was not Apollo 11’s large rocket upper stage, which was about 6,000 miles away by then, they concluded that they were seeing one of the small panels that had linked the spacecraft to the upper stage (any part of the spacecraft’s rocket upper stage will continue to move alongside the spacecraft, as both are floating in free-fall). These panels were too small to track from Earth and were relatively close to the Apollo spacecraft. Aldrin told me that they chose not to discuss this on the open communications channel since they were concerned that their comments might be misinterpreted. His entire explanation about identifying the panels was cut from the broadcast interview, giving the impression that the Apollo 11 crew had seen a UFO. Aldrin told me that he was angry about the deceptive editing and asked the Science Channel to correct the intentional twisting of his remarks, but they refused. Later, Aldrin explained what happened on CNN’s Larry King Live (left, bottom) but was nearly cut off by the host before he could finish. With the popularity of YouTube, this same question is addressed to me repeatedly, as in: “Check out this video on YouTube with Buzz Aldrin saying he saw a UFO on Apollo 11. Who is fibbing? NASA
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My answer was that the fibbing was being done by the producers of the video, who omitted the second half of the interview. It is instructive to watch this interview to see the ways the story is embellished and ultimately manipulated. Most of the talking is done by the interviewer and not Aldrin, but their comments have been edited to create the illusion of a seamless narrative. Throughout the interview we see a montage of short scenes from Apollo and other missions, including a blurry image through the
window taken during a later flight. Only a critical viewer will distinguish what Aldrin said from the narrative by the interviewer or realize that the video clips are unrelated. The end product is clever disinformation, strongly suggesting— without explicitly lying—that Aldrin and his crewmates saw an alien spacecraft. Many Internet claims of encounters between NASA astronauts and alien spacecraft are10 based on quotes from “secret communications” between flight crews and Houston. It is true that there are such private conversations, concerning crew health for example. But the Internet stories of overheard conversations are never documented and often attributed to leaks from unnamed NASA workers whose jobs (or even lives) would allegedly be at risk if they were identified. Many of these stories involve the Apollo 11 flight, and they include claims that alien spaceships accompanied the NASA craft during its
spacecraft along a crater rim monitored the astronauts’ spacewalk on the lunar surface. (Incidentally, Apollo 11 landed on a flat plain where there were no hills or crater rims to provide such a viewpoint.) To my knowledge, no NASA astronaut has ever reported seeing a UFO in space, let alone having a confrontation with aliens. However, this is not to say that no astronaut believes that alien visitations to Earth might be happening. Recently there were news reports that Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes in the reality of some reports of UFOs. He has attended a number of meetings of UFO believers, and he asserts that some of these reports are true, and that the U.S. government and military are aware of these alien visits. However, Mitchell does not claim to have seen aliens himself. His astronaut colleagues tell me that he has always had an interest in the occult, and he even tried to conduct a parapsychology experiment on the way to and from the Moon. It is easy for a journalist to ignore Mitchell’s caveats about most UFO reports being untrue, or about not encountering an alien himself, to give the impression that he and other astronauts have had frequent encounters with beings from other worlds. One argument presented to me by several correspondents is that aliens must have warned humans to stay away from their bases on the Moon. Otherwise, why was the Apollo program suddenly terminated with three more missions scheduled and almost ready for launch? (The huge Apollo/ Saturn-5 rockets that enthrall visitors to the NASA space parks at Canaveral, Houston, and Huntsville are not mock-ups; they are real hardware built for Apollo 18, 19, and 20.)
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Mars: The Viking Era or mesas is the Face on Mars, one of at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for
ars plays a unique role in public consciousness. Just a century ago, this planet was widely thought to be inhabited by intelligent creatures, largely due to astronomical studies and the popular writing of Percival Lowell. The classic science-fiction novel War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells reinforced public curiosity about the possibility of aliens on Mars. But early space missions that showed decisively that Mars was not really very Earth-like— with no canals and an atmosphere only 1 percent the size of ours—damped much of the public’s fascination. Scientific interest has steadily increased, however, and Mars is the planet most visited by spacecraft. The first stage of scientific exploration climaxed in 1976 with two identical Mars landers and orbiters as part of the Viking program. All four Viking spacecraft were fabulously successful, providing a comprehensive survey of the planet together with detailed analysis at two landing sites, including clever experiments to search for evidence of microbial life. After two decades of post-Viking neglect, NASA initiated a new series of Mars missions with the 1996 Mars Pathfinder, which included a rover about the size of a microwave oven. After two mission failures in 1998, several remarkably successful orbiters and the two famous Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, followed. In addition to high-resolution orbiting cameras, there is also a digital, global topographic map based on laser ranging between the orbiter and the surface. As a result, we have more detailed and quantitative data on martian topography than we do for much of the Earth’s surface. Naturally, the tens of thousands of high-resolution photos from orbit and on the ground (all publicly available) have been studied for evidence of life and any potential artifacts of a possible ancient civilization. In this respect, the most famous discovery was made by Viking Orbiter 1 in 1977, in a low-resolution (about 40 meters) photo of the ancient Cydonia region of Mars. In the midst of a heavily eroded plain with irregular low mountains
the iconic images of the space program. The Face on Mars, seen under oblique lighting, seems to be an oval humanoid face with eyes, nose, and a mouth. It is about one kilometer across and surrounded by a sort of halo that reminds some of the cloth headpiece worn by Egyptian pharaohs. It was spotted by Viking scientist Toby Owen and released to the press as a joke to show how even on Mars we (humans) could find features that looked vaguely like ourselves. Unfortunately, Viking project scientist Jerry Soffen made an offhand remark to the press that this “face” showed up only under this particular lighting and not in other photos of the same site. The problem was that Viking had not taken other photos of this spot at equal or
higher resolution, and the mission ended before this area could be mapped again. Thus began another conspiracy theory: NASA was suppressing confirming photos of the face. When the next NASA mission to photograph Mars (Mars Observer) failed in 1992 shortly before its arrival at the Red Planet, the story began to circulate that this failure was faked and the spacecraft was really in orbit and sending back secret high-resolution images of the face. The Face on Mars has been vigorously promoted by one energetic entrepreneur: Richard C. Hoagland. A young freelance journalist and one-time museum guide, Hoagland was a part of the large corps of journalists who encamped
the Viking landings. Hoagland not only accepted the artificial origin of the face, he went on to develop a detailed “theory” that linked this feature with a number of others in Cydonia that he also interpreted as artificial. These included a set of intersecting low ridges that he called the “city” and several mountains of roughly pyramid shape. (Pyramid-shaped peaks with three or four sides are a rather common product of both ice and wind erosion on Earth.) As improving technology allowed for higher photo resolution, the “face on Mars” looked less like a face and more like the natural landform it is. Hoagland set out to study the geometry of this layout, finding coincidences in the angles between the features that further demonstrated (to him) their artificial origin. He published the results from his “research” in a 350-page book called The Monuments of Mars (now in its fifth edition). He also undertook a lecture circuit that climaxed when a naïve public affairs officer at NASA Glenn (then Lewis) Research Center in Cleveland invited him to present a director’s seminar and then offered to put a videotape of this talk on the NASA TV channel. Hoagland also began making regular appearances on Art Bell’s late-night talk show Coast to Coast AM, where he still happily holds forth on the conspiracies of NASA and the U.S. government to keep the truth from the public. Hoagland’s elaborate interpretation of the “monuments” on Mars represents an amazing flight of imagination. Since the features are in a state of ruin, he concludes that the aliens who built them are no longer present and dates the construction of these huge projects to about half a million years ago. Since the face is (in his opinion) clearly human and directed upward (best seen from above), he concludes that it was built as a message for Homo sapiens, a species that was just emerging on Earth at the time.
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