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February 23, 1998: Mars Mission - Richard C. Hoagland
Published 2 years, 1 month ago
Description
Art Bell reunites with Richard C. Hoagland, winner of the Angstrom Science Award and former advisor to Walter Cronkite, for an urgent broadcast about the Mars Global Surveyor mission and what Hoagland calls a deliberate effort by NASA to avoid photographing the Cydonia region.
Hoagland explains that the spacecraft's elliptical orbit is about to bring its camera within 150 miles of the controversial face and pyramid structures, offering resolution 40 to 50 times sharper than the 1976 Viking images. However, principal investigator Dr. Michael Malin has announced on his website that the camera may be turned off due to power limitations, just as the geometry becomes ideal for Cydonia imaging. Hoagland argues this contradicts NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's public promise to photograph Cydonia at every available opportunity. Art provides fax numbers for Goldin, Ted Koppel, and CNN's John Holliman, urging listeners to demand the camera remain operational. In the second half, engineer Ted Tweetmeyer joins to reveal that telemetry data from the Challenger launch pad was lost because someone manually disabled a switching system in the blockhouse shortly before liftoff.
A broadcast that combines the Mars imaging controversy with troubling questions about the Challenger disaster and the boundaries between NASA's public mission and its classified operations.
Hoagland explains that the spacecraft's elliptical orbit is about to bring its camera within 150 miles of the controversial face and pyramid structures, offering resolution 40 to 50 times sharper than the 1976 Viking images. However, principal investigator Dr. Michael Malin has announced on his website that the camera may be turned off due to power limitations, just as the geometry becomes ideal for Cydonia imaging. Hoagland argues this contradicts NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's public promise to photograph Cydonia at every available opportunity. Art provides fax numbers for Goldin, Ted Koppel, and CNN's John Holliman, urging listeners to demand the camera remain operational. In the second half, engineer Ted Tweetmeyer joins to reveal that telemetry data from the Challenger launch pad was lost because someone manually disabled a switching system in the blockhouse shortly before liftoff.
A broadcast that combines the Mars imaging controversy with troubling questions about the Challenger disaster and the boundaries between NASA's public mission and its classified operations.