The recent most discussed photograph from the Red Planet was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter back in December of 2006. While looking at the photo, an anomaly hunter from South Africa Jean Ward noticed intriguing oddities on the surface of Mars. Although the image may be whopping 15 years old, the researcher’s fresh examination of the picture uncovered the curious scene which had been hiding in plain sight for all these years.
There have been dozens of photographs of Mars, containing spectacular unexplained anomalies. But this particular photo has an impressive object of the disc shape. The dimensions of the object are about 40 to 50 feet in diameter. In the upper part, from under the Martian soil that covered its front part, a superstructure in the form of a triangle can be seen from above.
Ward writes on his personal blog: “Here I feature an anomaly I discovered at a new site in Ceti Mensa in the region Valles Marineris. The anomaly looks like a disc-shaped object which hit the surface of Mars at a very low angle and left a trench behind it. The disc-shaped object measures approximately 12 to 15 meters in diameter. Apart from removing a few sand dunes to highlight the object I didn’t change anything else in the photograph.”
Ward theorized that the oddity could be some kind of a disc-shaped ship that “hit the surface of Mars at a very low angle.” Alternatively, he also posited that the strange streak behind the peculiar shape might be indicative of “a ramp leading into an underground entrance.”
There are several of them, which allows drawing certain conclusions, namely: after the collapse of the ditch made in the Martian surface by a ship during a fall or rather a forced landing, which can be seen from the gentle trajectory along which this ship landed, plowing an impressive distance and depth of the trail left.
One picture shows that the ditch left after landing began to fill up with sand dunes, but the second photo shows that half of the ditch is cleared from these dunes. This brings up a theory that suggests that the crew of the spaceship survived and took certain actions to repair the ship and clear some trenches for the takeoff.
This picture with anomaly was posted on the official website of this NASA mission which shows spectacular layers exposed on the bottom of Candor Chasma, a large canyon in the Valles Marineris system.
NASA researcher Chris Okubo wrote: “The floor here is approximately 4 kilometers below the canyon rim. The layers are made of sand- and dust-sized particles that were transported here by either wind or water. This canyon may have been filled to its rim by these sedimentary layers, subsequently eroded away, most likely by the wind. The elongate hills may represent areas of rock that are stronger due to differences in the size of the sedimentary particles, chemical alteration, or both.
One of the most eye-catching aspects of this scene are the intricate swirls that these layers form. Sedimentary rock generally accumulates in horizontal layers. These layers, however, have been folded into the patterns that we see today. Folding of the layers that are exposed here may have occurred due to the weight of overlying sediments.
Understanding the geologic history of this region may provide clues into the history of water on Mars because these layers may have accumulated in shallow lakes and may have undergone chemical reactions with this water. The presence of certain kinds of chemical reactions between water and rock can release energy that could have sustained habitable oases in these areas.”
NASA has seen all the intricate swirls of rocks and signs that Martian waters once splashed here, but an anomaly that has fallen in the area is not noticed. However, it is rather difficult not to notice it, provided that someone carefully looks at the picture taken.
While either fantastic scenario suggested by Ward would undoubtedly welcome news to UFO enthusiasts who believe that Mars was once inhabited by a race of intelligent extraterrestrials, it should come as no surprise that skeptical observers have a different take on the anomaly spotted on the surface of the Red Planet. Rather than a crashed flying saucer or a secret path into a subterranean alien base, they argue that the oddity is likely to be merely a trick of light and shadow.