Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and "The Lost Cities of Barsoom"

by Richard C. Hoagland
2006

When I was a kid growing up in Maryland in the 1950’s, one day I stumbled across an old book in the library with the distinctive title, "A Princess of Mars."

It was written (so the title page revealed) by an author with an equally unusual-sounding name -- "Edgar Rice Burroughs" ... in a year that seemed to a wide-eyed ten-year old almost as ancient as the Pyramids themselves: 1917!

Curious, I flipped through the first few pages ... and was immediately captivated by the lavish illustrations and highly evocative descriptions ... of an exotic, distant land (world?) that (for some strange reason) Burroughs insisted on calling throughout the book (despite the title on the dust jacket ...)... "Barsoom."

Miraculously, I was allowed to check this first-edition out on my own (even though it wasn’t in the "juvenile" section of the library ... and, in addition, was extremely valuable), and actually take it home.

Then, like John Carter -- the hero in Burrough’s extraordinary tale -- almost at once, I found myself on Mars...

Amid strange references to "thoats," the "Great Toonoolian Marshes," "Siths" and "the Princess of Helium," Burroughs (and his son -- who did the illustrations) literally painted a stark, haunting image of "a dying desert world," populated by warring factions of alien "Red, White and Green Martians," all fighting over the few remaining reservoirs of water ... surrounded by equally alien (and sometimes dramatically aggressive -- below) fauna and flora of an alien land ....

A world where past glories and untold ancient wonders still lurked -- invisible, but tantalizingly close-by -- "beneath Barsoom’s desert sands" ....

Apparently, I was not the only one to first encounter "thoats" at an impressionable age; Dr. Michael Malin, developer and Principal Investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), which has taken almost 200,000 images of Mars aboard NASA’s unmanned Mars Surveyor spacecraft, as well as the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) and Color Context Imager (CTX), on-board NASA’s latest Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), also apparently had a "memorable experience" with Burroughs sometime in his past...

Dr. Malin’s "Malin Space Science Systems" official website address is none other than: http://barsoom.msss.com

MRO’s first striking Mars mosaic, taken with another instrument aboard the spacecraft (the "HiRISE" camera) -- released early Friday (March 24, 2006) by NASA and the University of Arizona’s "HIRISE Team" -- brought all the mystery and magic of Barsoom rushing back.

For, even casual inspection of the 30.9 mile by 11.7 mile, ultra-high-resolution (~8 feet per pixel!), 190.5 MB TIF version (!) of this spectacular "test" image - centered at 34 S. -- 305 E. (also available through JPL’s Planetary PhotoJournal -- below) - revealed, in unparalleled geometric clarity, nothing less than... Burroughs "Lost Cities of Barsoom!"

Examination of high-resolution close-ups -- enlarged from this first MRO mosaic (below) -- demonstrate multiple areas (in the original 361-square-mile-image) that exhibit striking, rectilinear, geometries and obvious orthogonal alignments -- providing compelling new evidence of non-geological, artificial ruins (!) lurking just beneath the surface of this desert Martian landscape ... revealed lying in the bottoms of several ancient craters ....

When this stunning "Martian ruin" (below, right) is compared to similar structures here on Earth -- as in this 1936 aerial photograph of a long-abandoned "~eighteen hundred-year-old Sasanian Palace" in Iran (below, left) -- the eerie geometric similarity is instantly apparent.

The MRO HiRISE 20-inch telescope/CCD camera system -- even from an altitude of more than 1500 miles -- clearly has resolved remarkable, intricate, architectural details (below) of this impact-excavated subterranean "Martian complex" ....

Other areas of this detailed MRO mosaic (below) exhibit even more extensive evidence of ancient, still partially-buried architectural remains.

Here (below) is a close-up of the area outlined in white above. The scale (derived from the original, extremely large MRO mosaic) is "586 feet per inch" (~8 feet per pixel). Note the clearly rectangular (and even cubical) features regularly patterning the entire right-hand side.

A further sectional enlargement of this section of the image (below), reveals even more clearly these striking structural details -- some appearing as "ghostly" rectangular outlines, still mantled with their eroding overburden of reddish Martian dirt..

The half-buried "cubical" structures are slowly being uncovered, as those on the right have been revealed, by Martian winds steadily eroding away the remaining massive sediments ... apparently deposited a long time ago by some unknown "massive influx" of material. Whether this debris was airborn (volcanic dust), or water-born (carried in a massive flood) is currently unknown ....

Another terrestrial comparison (below) emphasizes the totally "un-natural" appearance of this Martian geometric network ... and what it actually, strikingly resembles.

Another close-up from the same MRO mosaic (rotated 50 degrees, clockwise -- below) demonstrates that not all "quasi-circular features" on Mars are simple "impact craters."

This remarkably preserved example exhibits organized, interior geometric detail characteristic of a massive, designed building ... surrounded by six, geometrically aligned, surviving elevated "walls" -- minus a possible roof! The massive former structure is attended by an array of additional, still partially-buried rectilinear features just outside.

The scale of the circular building is about 600 feet ... the size of a typical terrestrial football stadium. The surrounding rectilinear features are the size of average city buildings on Earth ....

Sunlight is coming from the right ....

Other examples of solitary, massive buildings with significant portions still identifiable --and, surrounded by arrays of partially-buried, smaller, carefully aligned structures -- can be found elsewhere in this remarkable MRO mosaic (below).

A close-up enlargement (below) of the ruins found in this small canyon (processed by Keith Laney -- with sunlight coming from the upper right) reveals a variety of additional geometric forms ... including, organized features clearly representing surviving portions of more single, massive structures ... some also hundreds of feet across (below).

Laney’s processed close-up of one of these objects (below -- rotated clockwise 50 degrees) reveals a series of flat planar facets, sharp 3-D angles and a "glass-like" translucence to its surface and interior ... all in one ~600-foot-wide geometric object ... and all, decidedly "non-geological."

Sunlight is coming from the right in this image.

Just east of the previous close-up lies THIS highly geometric ruin (below), revealed lying almost intact in the bottom of a ~2000-foot-wide collapse feature (NOT an impact crater!), within this ancient canyon wall ....

Noteworthy is the fact that similar-scale, geometrically-spaced objects appear to lie on the ground surface all around this wide depression. Yet, revealed by the collapse, this "complex" at the bottom obviously lies several hundred feet below this surrounding surface ... indicating that, either an entire, single massive structure fell almost undamaged into a "hole" which opened up in the surface (unlikely) .... or....

This section of our "buried Martian city" also extends downward ... at least several hundred feet!

And the observed "surface depression" is the result of the surface collapse of a former "dome-shaped roof" over the interior architecture -- a ~1000-foot-wide "buried Martian arcology" -- revealing the geometric organization of its former interior "sub-structures" (close-up, below) ....

Not too far away, another magnified close-up (also taken from the original MRO mosaic, and also rotated ~50 degrees, clockwise -- below) reveals another startlingly geometric "complex" of carefully aligned objects, apparent "plaza’s" ... contained inside startlingly rectangular "walls" ... and more neatly aligned rectilinear "architecture."

Sunlight is from the right.

As you look at this mosaic in detail, the one-time intelligent organization of all these features is still evident despite the untold millions of years that have ensued since whatever planetary catastrophe occurred obviously destroyed this major Martian "city" ... then, completely buried it!

Zooming in, the highly regular geometry of this central, rectangular "complex" (below) really stands out -- almost as if it was designed as some kind of "double stadium." And, the strange, bright object at the far end -- curiously aligned symmetrically with respect to the "east/west" central axis of entire "complex" -- almost seems as if it were deliberately placed there ... for optimum "viewing."

Here (below), oversampled by 4X, is this same curious-looking object.

It’s about 300 feet from top to bottom, and seems to be composed of highly angular sub-features, multiple right angles, and to possess it’s own intriguing symmetry ....

Imagine what we’d see if MRO took another mosaic of this region in six months -- once it’s positioned in it’s final 2-hour, ~180-mile high science orbit -- images almost ten times closer than this one!

Several miles away, "downstream" in another section of the mosaic (below) -- in the sediments forming the flat bottom of the ancient "outflow channel"...

...the ghostly square outline of another "several-hundred-foot-wide structure" -- this one complete with sweeping "butresses" and two geometric lines of standing "walls" (below) -- pokes up through the eroding sands in this 50-degree, clockwise rotation from the larger image above ....

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