Face page
The Face on Mars. Since 1976 when the Viking spacecraft orbiter took a
serious of images of an unusual 'landform feature' on the Martian surface that
looked like a human face, the controversy over this feature is not only not
settled, but even more intense than ever before. There is a long long
history to this feature, the dialogue, or lack there-of, the investigations, or
lack-of, the scientific and popular pontifications and all the media hype have
failed to still settle this issue once and for all. There is no way I can
hope to give you even a smidgeon of the amount of material this feature has
generated through the years right now. Your own microcomputer and your
internet connection can find you literally thousands of sites devoted to Mars anomalies
and specifically the Face itself. The search is interesting but fraught
with scammers whose findings may be based more on wishful thinking than hard
data. However, there is an unusual lack of public 'real-data' with respect
to this feature; and this presents us with a problem using your microcomputer
for investigative purposes cannot solve by itself.
As of 1/1/2001 there have been more than 57,000 public images released from
the MGS MOC to the USGS PDS so that the average citizen can use their own home
computers and access hard scientific data from this NASA scientific
instrument. There have been an estimated 120,000 images actually acquired
by the instrument. There has been only ONE ( 1 ) image of the Mars Face
publicly released, which was taken in April 1998. That image is:
There are new 'points of evidence' in this 1 new image that were not visible
in the original Viking images; the 'nostrils', clearly grooved 'headdress' and a
distinct alignment down the center of the mesa. We have still yet to see,
from ANY image Viking or MGS, the right hand side of the feature. In other
words, this scientific image is still only capturing 1/2 of the data
available. The above image is 4.2 meters per pixel resolution yet the MOC
is capable of 1.4 meter per pixel resolution so we also have yet to get the very
BEST scientific image of the data released to the public.
Also when going through the data archive I noticed that many images were
'missing' from the archive. MGSC1013 for example had 38 images missing
from its archive volume. Using MS Office Access database one can load the
index of images from each volume, or the entire collection. From that data
one can use critical thinking and problem solving skills in finding the dates,
times and circumstances surrounding the missing images. With that
information you can use the internet to go over the operations logs for the
spacecraft and look for any problems that may have arisen to account for the
missing images. There were none.
Through the Continuing Education Office of Clinton Community College I filed
a FOIA request to NASA about the missing
images, the Mars Face and other issues. This FOIA has the signed
endorsement of current CCC President Dr. Carol Eaton, Continuing Education Dean
Mike Schwartz, Retired; and in a further example of my bridging the two
college's together, this FOIA is endorsed by PSUC Board of Trustee Member and
Director of Community/Government Relations, Don Garrant. His support
brought on board PSUC alumni Congressman Anthony Weiner whose call to NASA
prompted NASA's response and call back to me. We are currently waiting
60-90 days to give NASA reasonable time to begin to comply with the FOIA
request. We'll keep you posted.