Even before Mars Observer was launched, there was controversy that it had been consciously designed to avoid a closer look at the Cydonia Complex.

11. The Spiritual Conspiracy

In July 1978, the American space station, Skylab, crashed into the Indian Ocean after only five years in orbit. Hundreds of millions of dollars of hardware were lost, and since it is likely that the United States government will not have another operational space station until after the year 2000, it can be argued that this incident alone set the American space program behind nearly a quarter-century.

It was entirely avoidable.

The First and Only American space station, Skylab.

Some years earlier, a scientific study had forecasted higher levels of solar activity, which could be expected to heat the Earth's atmosphere. This would expand the atmosphere to higher altitudes, where Skylab would encounter it during orbit. The increased air resistance would, it was feared, lead to orbital decay and the crash of the space station. To avoid this danger, it was suggested at the time of the last visit of astronauts to Skylab that the station be boosted to a higher orbit using the astronauts' own space vehicle to push it. NASA chose to ignore the accurate predictions provided by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and go with its own, more optimistic projections.[1]

At the time, the public did not criticize NASA's decision; the space agency still bathed in the glory of its successful Moon landings of a few years before. The space agency was seen as the one government agency that worked, delivering products on time and under budget. Its leadership was beyond criticism.

This public perception changed in the 1980s.

The watershed event came in January 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. The cause of the disaster was traced to a low-tech piece of engineering -- the failure of one of the rubber seals, called O-rings, which are located between the segments of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). The seal had failed because of contraction caused by the unusual freezing-cold weather of the launch day. The launch manual specifically forbade operations on days when the temperature dropped below freezing, but NASA managers contacted the SRB manufacturer, a company named Morton Thiokol, and requested a waiver from the launch requirement. Pressured thus by their major customer, Morton Thiokol management approved the launch.[2 ]

The Challenger disaster etched itself on the minds of a generation.

One spacecraft was lost, seven astronauts died, and the space program stagnated for two-and-a-half years.

During this same period, several other rockets failed disasterously, raising questions of quality and even sabotage.[3] The launch vehicles belonged not only to the United States, but also the European Consortium known as Ariane. For a time it seemed an invisible ceiling was installed five miles above the surface of the Earth, past which no Western rocket could traverse.

At first the Soviet space program seemed immune to the disease of freak accidents plaguing the West. For the first time, starting immediately after the Challenger disaster, Soviet space launches were publicly televised live. Soviet space station Mir became the leading edge of scientific research in space. The slow but steady tortoise of Soviet space achievement surpassed the American rabbit. But then came the high-profile missions of the Soviet space probes, Phobos 1 and 2.

These two spacecraft were launched toward Mars in 1988, to study both the planet and its inner moon, Phobos. As Cold War tensions faded, the mission was given an international flavor, and attracted a good deal of interest from the Western scientific community, especially since it was the first mission to Mars in over a decade.

Yet things did not go as planned. En route to Mars, Phobos 1 received a faulty radio command through human error, permanently terminating communications six weeks into the mission.[4] Phobos 2 lost one of its batteries, reason unknown. Two months after the probe entered Mars orbit, the radio was shut down to conserve power. It was supposed to come back automatically. It didn't.[5] Both space probes were lost before they could fulfill the promise of their missions.

Shortly after, the Soviet Union broke apart in the midst of economic crisis, and the future of what had once been the world's premier space program was cast in doubt.

Back in the United States, the Shuttle was returned to service, and the Hubble Space Telescope was launched with great fanfare. Placed in Earth orbit, beyond the distorting turbulence of the atmosphere, Hubble was to examine the heavens with a resolution supposedly far greater than possessed by any ground telescope.

Hubble was launched aboard the Shuttle in 1990. Although the deployment mission itself was a success, within a few weeks scientists admitted that they had a serious problem: the telescope was not returning the sharp images they'd hoped for. Invesitigation proved a manufacturing flaw in the telescope mirror had gone undetected. Although a simple and inexpensive test could have caught such problems, NASA management decided not to conduct that test. The agency, according to a major news magazine, had "inexplicably"[6] failed to detect the flaw.

The Hubble Space Telescope, flawed and obsolete.

Further, the delay of years caused by budget cuts and the Challenger explosion had rendered the telescope virtually obsolete even before launch; new ground-based telescopes incorporated computerized imaging technology that overcame atmospheric turbulance to rival the intended quality of Hubble. These ground-based observatories, such as the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, were far less expensive than Hubble.[7] Why then was NASA pouring vast funds into launching Hubble, then attempting to fix it?

The pattern comes to a head with the loss of Mars Observer.

That billion-dollar space probe, launched by NASA in September 1992, was a long-overdue return to the planet. Despite record-high budgets, NASA had not sent a single space probe to Mars for seventeen long years. By that time, public calls had grown for rephotographing the Cydonia Complex.

However, NASA had gone out of its way to stymie that objective.

The original design of the Mars Observer probe actually omitted a high-resolution camera. It would analyze the atmosphere with various sensors, and scan the terrain with radar, but its low resolution camera would see the Cydonia monuments merely as featureless specks! Michael Carr, former head of the Viking Imaging Team, expressed the NASA sentiment: "We have enough pictures of Mars."[8]

Congress disagreed; people like to see pictures, and so a high-resolution camera was added to the probe. However, breaking with space probe tradition, Mars Observer's high-resolution camera was fixed rather than swivel mounted. The camera couldn't be accurately aimed at anything -- let alone Cydonia!

"Despite the resolving power of Mars Observer's narrow-angle camera, it may not be able to photograph the so-called 'face,'" wrote Diane Ainsworth, a senior staff writer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an article published just prior to the launch of the space probe. She continues:

The narrow-angle camera cannot be pointed precisely at targets of interest -- the camera is fixed to the bottom of the spacecraft to point only at the surface that lies directly below. Taking a picture of a specific site with this camera requires waiting weeks or months for the orbit of Mars Observer to carry it over the site and then starting an exposure at the right time, with the hope that the calculations of the spacecraft position and target location were good enough that your target ended up in the camera's very narrow field of view during the exposure. Because of this hit-or-miss framing, Mars Observer may never get a close-up shot of the geologic feature.[9]

Some reasons why the Mars Observer camera couldn't photograph the Face were: (1) limited field of view, (2) limited size of data buffer, (3) pointing control instability, (4) spacecraft position uncertainty, (5) non-inertial position uncertainty, and (6) orbital spacing. Mike Malin, the Principal Investigator of the Mars Observer Camera, sums up what he calls the bottom line on rephotographing the Face: "We will try. We more than likely will not succeed."[10]

Mars Observer was unique in another way. NASA had always sent probes to Mars as twins: Mariners 3 & 4 in 1965, Mariners 6 & 7 in 1969, Mariners 8 & 9 in 1971, and Vikings 1 & 2 in 1976. Yet Mars Observer had no backup.

The Soviets had sent fifteen probes to Mars and all had failed. The US had sent eight, and two had failed. Backups were necessary, and Mars Observer was due.

And Mars Observer did fail. Just prior to orbital insertion, on August 21, 1993, the probe's radio was shut down to conserve energy during a fuel tank pressurization procedure. Contact was never regained. Mars Observer might be circling Mars right now, in perfect working order save for a defective transistor in its electronic clock. Or it failed to decelerate into Mars orbit, and now circles the Sun. Or it exploded into a million pieces.

The Artist's Conception That Never Was: Mars Observer performing its mission over Mars.

Since government agencies do tend to lie and cover up, there are those who have gotten suspicious about all this. Soon after Mars Observer fell silent and NASA reported the possibility of technical glitches as the cause of failure, a news magazine reported: "Extraterrestrial enthusiasts picketing the JPL last week had another theory: that NASA was only pretending Observer was lost to hide its discovery of Martians."[11]

The world abounds with conspiracy theories; most of them are absurd. But the idea of conspiracy is not itself absurd; coverups are facts of political existence. But is there evidence of a NASA conspiracy to hide the truth about the Cydonia landforms?

NASA certainly acts like there is:

1. Back in 1976 during the Viking mission, a NASA official 'told a mistruth' when the Face was originally discovered, claiming that there was a second photograph which demonstrated that it was only a 'trick of light and shadow.' Spacecraft logs show that no such second photograph was procured. At the time, the effect of this assertion served to quench any curiosity that reporters might have had about the true nature of the Face.

2. In spite of huge budgets, NASA did not send a space probe outside the orbit of the Moon from 1978 until ten years later. Seventeen years passed between the launching of Viking and the launching of Mars Observer.

3. When NASA did make preparations to send a space probe to Mars, namely Mars Observer, the original design called for sending it without a high-resolution camera.

4. When NASA was forced by Congressional pressure into placing a high-resolution camera on Mars Observer, it was uniquely bolted onto the platform, so that it would not be possible to aim it with sufficient accuracy to photograph the Cydonia Complex except by rare chance.

5. Following the Viking mission, NASA abandoned its policy of sending space probes in pairs, and instead sent them alone, thus enhancing the likelihood of mission failure. This change of policy occurred during a period when NASA was enjoying high levels of funding, and so cannot be blamed on 'budget cutbacks.'

6. On top of everything else, Mars Observer failed just as it was about to enter orbit around Mars and take its first close-up photographs of the planet. It could not have failed at a worse time; if it had failed sooner, a second mission might have been on its way sooner -- and if it had failed later, the Cydonia region might have been rephotographed beforehand.

The incidents of Skylab, Challenger, and Hubble, in conjunction with other space disasters, might be taken as signs of NASA incompetence. But the story of Mars Observer suggests something more ominous.

On August 25, 1993, the day that NASA was to reestablish contact with Mars Observer but did not, a prominent radio commentator told his audience of millions of listeners about a conspiracy-theorist group led by none other than science-journalist Richard Hoagland, who accused NASA of just such a cover-up:

He says that there is a rogue group in NASA intent on botching the mission or keeping its findings secret to conceal artifacts of intelligent life on Mars . . . And he admits, he says, "I'll tell you, I admit that my theory here is speculation on the edge of credulity," but he's not alone. Six other scientists, all with mainstream credentials, spoke at a news conference yesterday. They said that NASA is suppressing information out of a McCarthyesque fear of fundamentalists and the political power of the religious right, because proof of life in space, anywhere else but Earth, would challenge fundamentalists' beliefs. So . . . let me rephrase this for you. We have six mainstream NASA scientists supporting a theory that NASA is covering up the true success and purpose of the mission, because they don't want to deal with the reaction of fundamentalist right wing Christians who wouldn't be able to deal with the discovery of evidence of life on Mars . . . you believe this?[12]

NASA, worried about fundamentalist christians? The space agency regularly makes statements about planetary and stellar evolution, without regard to complaints from 'fundamentalist Christians.' A survey of NASA literature and supported scientific work shows a complete disregard for the sensitivities of those attached to scientific creationism. NASA is outspokenly pro-evolution.

Nonetheless, Hoagland is right about the appearance of a conspiracy, and it is even more widespread than he believes. Space stations, shuttles, and orbiting telescopes fail because of gross blunders. A lie is told to distract the media from Cydonia. Strong signs of life on Mars are twisted into proof of no life and the scientists who call attention to the matter are viciously ridiculed. Mars Observer is delayed, underfunded, and deliberately designed to avoid photographing Cydonia, and then disappears. There's too much of a pattern here to be ignored. But what kind of conspiracy is this?

This is more than the work of a tight-knit 'rogue group' hidden within the bowels of NASA. It would have to include the name of esteemed scientists like Norman Horowitz, Joshua Lederberg, Herb Klein, Michael Carr, Gerald Soffen, and Carl Sagan. The conspiracy membership must number in the thousands, go back to the 1960s, and span national borders.

The conspiracy is sweeping in its scope. It is blatant in its results. Yet it operates in total secrecy, without one defection. Such power hints of superhuman design and guidance.

Imagine alien beings did not want humans discovering the truth about the Martians. Imagine they had some sort of telepathic hypnosis. Through this power, they might direct intelligent, idealistic human beings to subconsciously serve their purposes. Space probes are misdesigned and misdirected by these same humans. The humans have no idea of the real reason they are sabotaging their beloved space program. If asked, they will provide absurd rationalizations for their behavior -- which they sincerely believe.

There would be no tangible evidence of this conspiracy in terms of defections, spies, and volumes of secret memorandums. The only evidence would be in the resulting behavior -- behavior that leads to slowdowns, delays, and failures. This matches what we see. And it also happens to agree with the Bible.

For the Bible describes alien entities with both the motive and power to direct this conspiracy. These entities are the fallen angels known as demons.

Why would demons want to neutralize the space program? It's the thesis of this book that discovery of intelligent life on Mars will ultimately demolish the validity of the theory of evolution. If this is true, then it is possible that the eyes of millions of people will be open to the lies of evolution, and they will turn instead to the truth of the Bible -- and to God.

This is contrary to the will of Satan and his demons. They want to keep people away from God, and evolution has served them well in this purpose. Demons would want to do everything they can to uphold evolutionary doctrine. If that includes sabotaging the space program, they will do so.

Can demons telepathically direct people to disable the space program? Demons apparently cannot physically manifest themselves, but the Bible says they do have the power to influence human thoughts. The most dramatic manifestation of demonic mental power is 'demonic possession,' in which a demon's spirit attempts to take direct control of a human body. In the known cases, this possession is imperfect, for the human under possession often becomes physically violent. In the Bible, in Mark 5:2-5, Jesus encounters a demonically possessed man whose 'unclean spirit' causes him to howl and gnash himself with rocks. If there is 'perfect possession,' we don't know of it from scripture.

Demons also have the power of 'temptation.' Evil thoughts are introduced to the human mind in such a way that we do not realize the source comes outside ourselves. These thoughts include not only desires but complex rationalizations. If you've ever tried to resist doing something wrong, and your mind seems to effortlessly come up with excuses to do it, this is why.

Demonic thought-influence goes beyond rationalization for individual sinfulness. Demons also administer 'doctrines of demons' (as the Bible mentions in 1 Timothy 4:1) such as false religions and ideologies designed to mislead humans into group evil.

Demons have the power to transmit their thoughts to receptive but otherwise unwitting individuals. Many of these individuals testify that their ideas seem to come from an 'inner voice' apart from their own conscious mind -- thus confirming the truth of the Bible even if they consciously repudiate the Bible.

Is a global conspiracy to sabotage the space program in keeping with demonic behavior? The Bible says demons often act in concerted plans. In Daniel 10, an angel of God testifies to battling the 'Prince of Persia' -- apparently a demonic entity placed by Satan to govern the affairs of that nation. Satan, 1 John 5:19 tells us, has the whole world under his power. Outside our material realm, in the spiritual dimension, demons literally have a bureaucracy in which grand strategy is directed by Satan, administered by the 'princes' of nations, and put into effect by millions of demons employing telepathy-like powers to intrude their thoughts into human minds.

Christians are not immune to demonic influence, but it is only logical that those who are closest to God would be most protected from the powers of demons. Likewise, those who reject God would be more vulnerable.

Evolutionists would be extremely vulnerable. They deny the existence of God and demons. They're like a blind man wandering across a battlefield, refusing assistance from allies and oblivious to the enemy fire targeting him. But even worse: when the enemy whispers to them, they assume it is the voice of their own intuition.

Satan has a rational reason for wanting to shut down the space program. He has the means of mental powers to do so. And evolutionists, who currently run the space program, are fully vulnerable to his directives.

Thus evolutionists, in the name of idealism, would promote policies that are adverse to the exploration of space. Scientists would dismiss key data as 'trivial' and 'irrelevant.' Management decisions would consistently involve glaring blunders. Even technicians would be distracted at critical points in mission procedures. All would have rationalizations for their actions, which in hindsight would seem utterly absurd, and which would continually lead to frustration and disaster.

When the Face on Mars photograph was presented to the media back in 1976, a scientist 'remembered' there was a second photograph that showed it was an illusion. When Viking mission tests confirmed the existence of microscopic life on Mars, scientists found their minds suddenly deluged with reasons why they had to believe the exact opposite. Just as, ten years later, scientific minds were filled with all kinds of rationalizations as to why a space probe to Mars should not be equipped with a high-resolution camera!

The rationalizations often lead to dishonesty, as we would expect from demonic influence. According to former presidential science advisor George Keyworth: "Of all the organizations I deal with, I have only seen one that lied, NASA. The reason they lie, of course, is because they are wrapped up in a higher calling. In their eyes, [these] are white lies."[13]

Yet these little white lies have invariably backfired, so that thirty years after the Space Age began, we are stranded in the same low Earth orbital rut. As long as evolutionists run NASA, the space program will remain moribund. The demonic forces influencing them don't want us going to Mars, disproving evolution, and turning people toward the story of creation found in the Bible, and then to reconciliation with God. This is the ultimate reason for the intangible conspiracy.

But wait, Richard Hoagland, who has done more to promote interest in the Face on Mars and Cydonia Complex than any other person, is not a christian. How does he see the truth?

Well, does he see the truth? Or is he another unwitting part of Satan's campaign of disinformation?

Hoagland's book, The Monuments of Mars, is filled with diagrams of geometric relationships between the objects at the Cydonia Complex. The measurements are precise, but irrelevant. For example, he identifies the latitude of the Cydonia Complex as being the 'tangent of the ratio of e over pi.' Now, the field of mathematics has hundreds of relationships that are less obscure than the 'tangent of the ratio of e over pi.' For example: e, or pi, or e over pi, or pi over e -- or the sines or cosines of any of these values. Basically, you can pick a latitude at random and find a mathematical relationship to go with it. Which means Hoagland gives no reason to think the actual Cydonia latitude is special.

The 'Martian Moon God Temple' hypothesis presented in this book does give us a reason for thinking the Cydonia Complex latitude is special. The latitude is directly related to the Martian moon system, and so is all the rest of the geometry at Cydonia. A theory is confirmed by its ability to predict, and the 'Martian Moon God Temple' hypothesis does accurately predict key geometrical correspondences between the Martian moon system and the Cydonia Complex.

Hoagland's hypothesis predicts nothing. He refers to 'higher dimensional physics,' but there is nothing in 'higher dimensional physics' that treats the tangent of pi over e as special. The Cydonia numbers that Hoagland finds don't relate to anything in particular. There is no way to confirm the theory with prediction, and so it's ultimately unprovable.

This gives his critics an excuse to roll their eyes over the whole Cydonia issue. Hoagland's work is ultimately disinformation. He's probably very sincere -- but what real good has he done? He's distracted us from the real analysis, and his accusations of conscious conspiracy have caused NASA to become antagonized to the entire issue.

Furthermore, it is clearly the work of demons for Hoagland to relate his conspiracy charges to christian fundamentalism. If space probes ever do get around to confirming the artificial nature of the Cydonia Complex, the credibility of materialistic evolution will be challenged, and the public will ask evolutionists: "Why didn't you say anything about this?" Thanks to Hoagland, the evolutionists can reply, "We kept it a secret because we knew the christians would go crazy!" In other words: blame the victims.

Given the domination of NASA by evolutionists, it's outlandish to implicate christians. What made Hoagland think of it?

More ominously, Hoagland, despite assertions he has 'problems' with it, appears enmeshed in the New Age movement. His publisher, North Atlantic Books, has a title list packed with New Age authorings. Hoagland relates the Cydonia Complex to New Age topics such as 'crop circles.' Former astronaut Brian O'Leary, perhaps Hoagland's closest associate and a confirmed student of the New Age, openly admits to receiving psychic visions from higher powers.[14]

What if these 'higher powers' are demons? Then a New Ager is a greater tool for a demon than an evolutionist. A New Ager actively seeks to serve demons -- thinking, of course, they are 'angels of light.' But the Bible (1 John 4:1) warns that we must 'test the spirits.' This is good advice for everyone, yet it is remarkably sparse in New Age literature.

Is it judgemental to accuse mainstream scientists and Hoagland of being demonically misled? Then how much more judgemental is it for mainstream scientists to treat Hoagland as a self-promoting pariah, and for Hoagland to accuse NASA of being in the thrall of sinister conspiracy?

And as they contest, the American space program languishes.

On November 19, 1996, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin stated in a panel discussion before the Freedom Foundation Freedom Forum,

There were pictures taken from some Viking spacecraft, and if you look at the right kind of shadows you could imagine that there is a Face on Mars. Now there's two ways that NASA could approach this: one, we could say: "You don't know what you're talking about; we know that there couldn't be a civilization on Mars, and therefore we'll never take a picture of that spot." But, there are taxpayers who believe this. So one of the things we are going to do on our next mission is when the spacecraft goes over that spot, if we have the right pointing, we'll try and take a picture, and scientifically show what we've found. [15]

Goldin, obviously is bowing to public pressure. But what about the deeds to match the words? The next NASA mission to Mars was Mars Pathfinder, which on July 4, 1997 directly landed on the surface of the planet without taking any orbital pictures at all. The mission after that was Mars Global Surveyor, an orbital photographic mission which arrived in orbit around Mars in September 1997. MGS was unique among Mars exploration craft in that it did not enter a low mapping orbit immediately, but instead arrived in a highly eccentric orbit that at its farthest passed beyond the orbit of Deimos and at its nearest grazed the martian atmosphere. The intent of the grazing was to gradually slow the craft into a closer mapping orbit without having to expend large quantities in fuel. While this meant that the overall craft could be bigger and the mission less expensive, it also meant that it would take months, until March 1998, before the mapping mission could ever begin. A suspicious mind could accuse the MGS mission planners of building 'foot dragging time' into their mission profile.

. . . The suspicious mind would have become more suspicious when, on October 31, 1997, NASA announced,

After a several-week hiatus in aerobraking, the Surveyor flight team will resume lowering the spacecraft's orbit beginning November 7th. This effort will proceed at a more gradual pace as compared to the original plan, and will extend the amount of time needed to complete aerobraking by eight to 12 months.

The decision to resume aerobraking came after intensive engineering analysis, computer simulations, and laboratory tests with representative hardware to characterize the current condition of one of the spacecraft's two solar panels, which began to flex more than expected during Surveyor's lowest dip into the Martian atmosphere on October 6th. [16]

A solar panel hinge was stuck, and so the mission was delayed another year. Ironically, in a sense, when the space probe first orbited Mars it was farther away in time from photographing the Cydonia region than when it first left Earth. Cydonia seems to have that effect on NASA.