National Press Club 1989


BREAKTHROUGH IN THE SEARCH FOR ET ARTIFACTS

LEADS TO CREATION OF NEW ORGANIZATION

DEDICATED TO VERIFICATION OF INTELLIGENCE HYPOTHESIS

ON MARS

[The following statement was released by Richard C. Hoagland, Founder of the MARS MISSION, March 22, 1989. The occasion was his invitation to present new research material on the on-going Cydonia Investigation, at a "newsmaker" breakfast held at the National Press Club, Washington D.C.]

Did NASA, during Viking's unmanned mission 13 years ago, photograph -- and then inexplicably ignore -- ruins of an extinct, but once highly-advanced civilization on the planet Mars? Is the controversial "face on Mars" merely the centerpiece of a specifically-designed, artificial "complex?"

Since 1983, I have been privileged to lead a team of multidisciplinary scientists, from a variety of major research institutions, in a serious attempt to answer this fundamental question -- potentially, the most important question in NASA's entire 30-year existence. I founded The Mars Project: a nonprofit research organization dedicated to bringing state-of-theart analytical techniques to the Viking data, relevant to answering that question.

Our research has now led to some remarkable results -published in both the scientific literature and in my own chronicle of these events: "The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever" (North Atlantic, 1987). Verification of evidence pointing toward the existence of other intelligent beings in the Universe -- who may have left material ruins right next door on Mars -- would undoubtedly represent the greatest discovery in human history.

It is in this context that dramatic new developments in our research must be approached: a recent addition to our research team, Mr. Erol Torun, of the Defense Mapping Agency, and I, have now discovered an extraordinary series of fundamental, repeating geometrical and mathematical constants, linking the controverdial "face" with a series of equally enigmatic objects in the Cydonia region of the planet. These highly precise measurements and observations, to a repeated accuracy of one part in a thousand, have now produced the following staggering conclusion:

Conservatively speaking, the probability that this unique array of objects -- including the controversial "face" -- are NOT the direct product of Intelligence, must at this point be calculated as less than one chance in several trillion!; the accompanying map illustrates the extreme redundancy of these discoveries -- and the astronomically-remote likelihood that they are simply due to chance.

In "Monuments" (page 232) a prediction was ventured, that ultimate resolution of the "Cydonia Enigma" -- is it due to exotic geology or Intelligent Design? -- would depend on a "relationship model": discovery of a geometric linkage within and between the "anomalous objects" at Cydonia, within an unmistakable mathematical frame. With these discoveries, the "relationship model" for the Intelligence Hypothesis has now been verified -- and to an extraordinary level of redundancy and precision.

A true scientific hypothesis is ultimately testable. In that spirit, these results regarding the possible presence of extraterrestrial artifacts at a place called "Cydonia" now demand the Ultimate Test: new imagery, from NASA's unmanned spacecraft scheduled to return to Mars in 1992 -- Mars Observer. Inexplicably, however, NASA in recent on-the-record-statements has refused to carry out that test; NASA scientists in charge of the Mars Observer mission insist that Cydonia will NOT be rephotographed, regardless of the evidence we have presented.

Because this official Agency position will prevent submitting the Intelligence Hypothesis to its final, crucial test, I am therefore announcing today the creation of a new "spin -off organization" to the existing Mars Project -- The MARS MISSION -- designed to educate the American people on these important new research results, and to press for Congressional legislation, if necessary, to insure their verification. The right of all Americans to Know -- because they are ultimately paying for that mission -- demands we do no less.

To that end, the single objective of The MARS MISSION will be to press for the earliest possible return to Mars -- by unmanned and eventually manned missions -- for the expressed purpose of exploring the extraordinary possibility and implications of a set of extraterrestrial ruins right next door--

On behalf of all Mankind.

END