89 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
89 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: MORE INFO/HISTORY OF THE PHOBOS/MARS OBSERVER STORY
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FILE: UFO2023
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NASA lost radio contact with its Mars Observer spacecraft on Saturday August
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21, 1993, just days before it was expected to enter into a circular orbit 400
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km above the surface of the planet. Orbit insertion was supposed to have
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occured on Tuesday August 24th at about 1:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time.
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The spacecraft was expected to begin global surface mapping of Mars on
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December 16th that would have lasted an entire Martian year of 687 Earth
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days. Various attempts were made to re-establish contact with the spacecraft,
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but so far the Mars Observer has remained silent. NASA engineers believe a
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transistor in the satellite's clock failed, rendering the Mars Observer
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"brain-dead" and radio silent. It seems improbable that the spacecraft
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automatically entered into orbit around Mars, and probably missed its
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destination completely. The Mars Observer was launched on September 25, 1992
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on a Titan III rocket from Cape Canveral Air Force Station, Florida.
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On July 26, 1993 at 8:52 PM PDT, the Mars Observer returned its first image
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of Mars when it was 5.8 million kilometers from the red planet. That image
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was taken using the spacecraft's high resolution, narrow angle telescopic
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camera. In 1976 an unmanned NASA Viking spacecraft sucessfully photographed
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the surface of Mars from an altitude of approximately 1700 kilometers. The
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objective of the Viking mission was to search for evidence of intelligent
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life on Mars, either now or in the past. Image 35A72 taken by Viking-1 and
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received by the Jet Propulsion Lab showed a mile-long, 1500 foot high
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humanoid "face" staring into eternity on the surface of Mars. It was later
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dismissed without investigation by NASA as a "trick of light and shadow" and
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filed away. Frame 70A13 taken over the same area with a higher sun-angle
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showed the same feature in addition to a pyramid-like structure approximately
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16 kilometers southwest of the "face". In 1980, Vicent DiPietro and Gregory
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Molenaar, imaging engineers under contract to NASA's Goddard Space Flight
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Center on another project, stumbled across these Viking images. After
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further investigation they discovered folds and horizontal stripes on the
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"headpiece" or "helmet" of the face which resembled those of Egyptian
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Pharaohs, symmetrical cheekbones, an eye socket, eyeball, and pupil, nose,
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mouth, and teeth. The facial proportions were found to be similar to those
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of early man. DiPietro and Molenaar published their findings and
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conclusions in 1980 and were stonewalled by the planetary science community
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for doing so. In a feature article in "Soviet Life" magazine published in
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1984, the Russians revealed their own fascination with the Martian "sphinx"
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and five-sided pyramids found in the Viking photos. In an effort to carry
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out their own investigations, the former USSR launched Phobos I and Phobos
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II, two unmanned satellites to the planet Mars on July 12, 1988. The reason
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for launching two craft was for redundancy in case one malfunctioned. Phobos
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I was lost after it received a bad command during its journey to Mars and
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fell silent when controllers tried to re-acquire it on the way. Phobos II
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arrived in January 1989 and entered an orbit around Mars as the first phase
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towards its real destination, a small Martian moon called Phobos. The
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mission was flawless until the craft aligned itself with Phobos. On March 28,
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1989, an elliptical object was detected to be moving towards the satellite
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seconds before it failed. All indications were that the elliptical object
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had collided with the satellite which was now dead and left spinning out of
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control. On March 28, 1989 Tass, the official Soviet news agency stated:
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"Phobos II failed to communicate with Earth as scheduled after completing
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an operation yesterday around the Martian moon Phobos. Scientists at
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mission control have been unable to establish stable radio contact." The
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next day a top official of the Soviet Space Agency (Glavkosmos) stated:
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"Phobos II is 99% lost for good." It is important to note that he stated
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the entire satellite was gone and not that just radio contact was lost with
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it. On March 30, 1989 at 4:41 PM EST, the Associated Press released the
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following statement: "Soviet research centers are now trying to interpret
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so far 'unexplained optical phonomena' on the pictures of the Martian
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surface. The pictures show an inigmatic strip 23-25 miles wide and a
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large spindle-shaped formation." On March 31, 1989 headlines dispatched
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by the Moscow correspondents of the European News Agency (EFE) stated:
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"Phobos 2 Captured Strange Photos of Mars Before Losing Contact With It's
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Base. Vremya revealed yesterday that the space probe Phobos II, which was
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orbiting above Mars when Soviet scientists lost contact with it on Monday,
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had photographed an unidentified object on the Martian surface seconds
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before losing contact." Scientists described the unidentified object as
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a thin ellipse 20 kilometers in length. It was further stated that the photos
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could not be an illusion because they were captured by 2 different color
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cameras as well as cameras taking infrared shots. One controller at the
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Kaliningrad control center concluded that the Phobos II probe was left
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spinning out of control, a result of being struck or shot. In the October
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19, 1989 issue of Nature Magazine, Soviet scientists concluded that the craft
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could be spinning because it was impacted. Not since the NASA Viking missions
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in 1976 has there been a successful unmanned mission to Mars. NASA's Mars
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Observer is simply the latest in a series of spacecraft destined for Mars
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that failed unexpectedly just prior to reaching the planet. The mystery
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continues.
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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********************************************** |