The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

On 25 July 1976 the craft Viking Orbiter 1 was busy acquiring images of the Cydonia region of Mars in search of potential landing sites for Viking Lander 2. Its pictures of the Martian landscape revealed exciting geological formations, a mixture of plains and mesas and buttes (large rocky outcrops familiar in the American Southwest), but what the NASA scientists could not have expected to see was a giant face staring back at them from the planet’s surface.

The photograph was not released immediately as the scientists believed it was nothing but an amusing coincidence. It was not until the image was «rediscovered» by Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, two engineers at the Goddard Spaceflight Center, that the rest of the world had the opportunity to view this remarkable phenomenon.

The grainy images appeared to show a humanoid face with a deep-set eye socket, a narrow nose and half of a thin, unsmiling mouth. Deep shadows obscured the other half of the face but to the viewer the features appeared to be perfectly symmetrical. The structure itself was over 1.5 miles long by 1 mile wide by 1,500 feet high (2.5km x 1.6km x 0.45km), far larger than anything built on earth. Nevertheless, once the photograph was broadcast, people quickly identified a resemblance between the Martian face and those of ancient Egyptian pharaohs or of the Sphinx at Giza. NASA, however, stolidly maintained that it was by mere chance this particular hill resembled a face, and attempted to downplay the whole matter.

Those who believed the hill was artificial began to look for other clues to support their hypothesis. One was Richard C. Hoagland, a regular science correspondent on a radio talk show in Florida, who became convinced that the Face was part of a complex of other structures visible in the Viking pictures, including a «fortress», an artificial «cliff», a five-sided «pyramid» and a collection of rocky forms dubbed «The City Square». He went on to write a book about the subject and began a campaign to force NASA to admit that it was covering up the true nature of the discoveries. Debate began to rage about who could have built the monuments. Given the resemblances to Egyptian architecture, had a race of long-dead Martians visited the earth and constructed similar monuments? — a view that seemed to jibe nicely for those who had always maintained aliens had a hand in the building of the Pyramids. And, if the aliens had achieved that, what else could they have been responsible for? Where had human civilization — or, more dramatic still, human life — really begun? The implications for human history seemed enormous, and yet the scientific community continued to refuse to take the issue seriously. It seemed the scientists had a vested interest in keeping the Martian-civilization theory under wraps.

The suspicion of a cover-up appeared to be confirmed when NASA announced the launch of a second reconnaissance mission to Mars, this time with a camera aboard capable of taking high-resolution photographs that could pick out objects the size of a small airplane clearly on the planet’s surface … but that the Face would not be one of them. NASA argued it had more pressing scientific priorities elsewhere and time on the camera was limited. It was soon forced by public outcry to reconsider its plans. The Face had been capturing people’s imagination for over 20 years, and they wanted to know once and for all whether it was artificial. NASA backed down, and on 5 April 1998 the Mars Orbiter Camera re-photographed the Face.

Anti-climactically, the new pictures confirmed what scientists had been saying all along: the Face was just a lumpy, rather uninteresting hill. In the new photos there was no sign of any facial features at all. «All of its dimensions, in fact, are similar to other mesas. It’s not exotic in any way,» commented Jim Garvin, a NASA Mars scientist.

The believers in sentient life on Mars did not give up their dream so easily, however. The camera had taken the pictures during the Martian winter, they said; wispy cloud was obscuring the detail and making the image appear unnaturally flat. Not only that, NASA had doctored the photos to cover up the presence of an alien civilization on Mars. Once again NASA bowed to public pressure and a second pass was made over the Cydonia region in April 2001, this time during the Martian summer. These photographs appear startlingly clear, considering the distance from which they are taken, and once again show an ordinary mesa formation, complete with fissures and cracks, and no symmetrical features at all. This conclusion was backed up by evidence from the Mars Global Surveyor’s onboard laser altimetry equipment, capable of measuring planetary features to within a foot (30cm), which delineated a rocky outcrop and not an alien-made structure. The same was true of other features such as the «cliff» and the «pyramid», and the whole mystery dissolved.