Phobos (from the Greek. Phobos - fear), satellite of Mars. Discovered by A. Hall (USA, 1877). Distance from Mars - 9400 kilometers, orbital period - seven hours 39 minutes 27 seconds. It has an irregular shape and always faces Mars with the same side. Its largest diameter is 26 kilometers.
- Great Encyclopedia of Cyril and Methodius. 2000.
Inexplicably high speed
Could Phobos, the mysterious Martian moon, which has attracted the attention of astronomers for a long time, be an artificial structure?
This question, which first arose more than 50 years ago, nowadays arises before researchers with renewed vigor in connection with the emergence of new facts concerning this celestial body.
Scientists have confirmed that there is a vast empty space inside Phobos. This very important conclusion is the result of research on the Mars Express Radio Science program, which was carried out by two teams of experts. They, independently of each other, analyzed information about the force of gravity of Phobos and about its mass. The information was received by radio from the artificial Mars satellite Mars Express Orbiter, launched on July 2, 2003 by a Russian launch vehicle from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
It is appropriate to recall here that Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, a Russian astrophysicist, a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences who, together with Professor Carl Sagan, a famous American astronomer, wrote the book "Reasonable Life in the Universe" (published in 1966), back in 1959, suggested the hollowness of Phobos and its artificial origin.
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Shklovsky tried to understand the reason for the inexplicably high speed of rotation of this satellite around Mars. This phenomenon aroused great interest in scientific circles both in the Soviet Union and abroad.
The connection was lost forever
On July 12, 1988, the USSR sent two automatic interplanetary stations (AMS) to Mars - "Phobos-1" and "Phobos-2". Each of them was equipped with a set of complex devices and instruments: three television cameras, a spectrometer, a flight and attitude control system, video and sound recording systems. The total cost of both AMCs was $ 480 million.
At first everything went well, but on September 2, Phobos-1 did not get in touch. Attempts to restore contact were unsuccessful. Phobos-2 in March 1989 safely reached an intermediate orbit around Mars and managed to transmit a series of data and photographs to Earth before the Mission Control Center (MCC) in Kaliningrad, Moscow Region (now the city of Korolev) lost contact with it.
There is information that the task of "Phobos-2" included the study of strange objects and phenomena causing questions on the surface of its namesake - the satellite closest to Mars. The AMC was supposed to maneuver around Phobos for two months, at times descending over it to a distance of up to 50 meters. And besides, it was planned to drop two research modules on the Martian moon - for analyzing the soil, measuring the magnetic field, making and transmitting images of the satellite's surface to the Earth. Upon completion of this part of the program, "Phobos-2" was supposed to return to orbit around Mars and continue its research.
But that did not happen. First, from the Martian orbit, the AMS transmitted images of the surface of the Red Planet, as well as data on the composition and properties of its atmosphere. Then, according to the program, on March 27, 1989, Phobos-2 interrupted radio communication with the Mission Control Center - for the duration of the rendezvous with Phobos.
But after giving the command to resume communication, MCC received only a very weak, short signal from the probe, after which Phobos-2 was silent forever.
AMC destroyed … by sentient beings
Images of the surface of Mars, transmitted by Phobos-2, only added new mysteries. One of them shows a system of straight lines near the planet's equator. Since the camera was shooting in the infrared range, the lines cannot be geological formations, but are localized sources of heat. Each line is three to four kilometers wide. Another image shows a large, oblong, regular shadow. There is no object in the photo casting this shadow, but it is clear that it must be huge. The last picture was taken by a camera, for some reason directed not at the planet's surface, but at the sky. It clearly shows a strange object in space.
In 1991, Marina Lavrentievna Popovich - Air Force Colonel Engineer, Candidate of Technical Sciences, First Class Test Pilot, owner of 101 world records on various types of aircraft, the former wife of Soviet cosmonaut No. 4 Pavel Romanovich Popovich - during her stay in Los Angeles passed to the American journalist and writer, researcher of anomalous phenomena Paul Stonehill, who emigrated to the United States from Odessa, one of the photographs taken by Phobos-2. It captures a huge cylindrical object about 25 kilometers long. This was the very last picture received from the AMC, after which the connection with it was interrupted.
Transferring the photo to Stonehill, Popovich said that the USSR Glavkosmos knew all the details of the Phobos-2 incidents and that, according to experts, this AMS was destroyed in 1989 by some intelligent beings.
Phobos secrets will be revealed
In 1996, the United States published the book "UFOs in the USSR", written by Paul Stonehill in collaboration with the popular American ufologist, writer and TV presenter Philip Mantle. It told about contacts with UFOs in the Soviet Union. In the book, the authors have included information received from Marina Popovich, and also placed a photograph she gave to Paul Stonehill.
The mysteries of Phobos - the "frightening" satellite of Mars - are of interest to many people around the world. So, on August 6, 2009 in an interview on the C-SPAN cable television channel, American astronaut Edwin. ("Buzz") Aldrin, the second human to set foot on the lunar surface in July 1969, said: “We have to fly to the moons of Mars. One of them is a monolith, the shape of which is clearly visible and similar to a potato and which orbits Mars every seven hours. I mean Phobos."
In Russia, along with Marina Lavrentievna Popovich, prominent experts in the field of space exploration and exploration are trying to draw the attention of world science to the strange satellite of Mars. One of them is Professor of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) Valery Pavlovich Burdakov, Honored Scientist of Russia, developer of space technology, who is also engaged in research on the principle of UFO movement.
A lot of information and hypotheses regarding Martian Phobos is available from specialists in the United States. And recently it became known about plans to organize a Russian-Chinese expedition for a joint flight to Phobos.
So, perhaps, this "horror story" does not have long to hide its secrets from us earthlings.
Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 17. Vadim Ilyin