Apr 6 1998
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(New page: NASA released images recorded by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, showing the Cydonia region of Mars in 10 times more detail than that provided in the images recorded more than 20 ...)
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NASA released images recorded by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, showing the Cydonia region of Mars in 10 times more detail than that provided in the images recorded more than 20 years ago by one of the U.S. Viking space probes. In the new images, the Sun was shining from the opposite direction than in the images recorded by the Viking probe. Viking's images had revealed a surface formation in the hilly desert area, Cydonia, which some members of the public believed to be a monumental sculpture of a humanoid face, in spite of NASA scientists' insistence that the "face" was only a common geological formation called a mesa. Some of those people who believed the structure to be a sculpture had accused NASA of manipulating data in a conspiracy to keep the origins of the face a secret. Surveyor's new images confirmed NASA's previous analysis of the formation. However, in an effort to counteract the conspiracy rumors, NASA posted on the Internet the raw data sent by Mars Global Surveyor and took no official position regarding what the images did or did not reveal. Several planetary scientists remarked that "the new image contained no surprises and no evidence of artificial origin.
Cosmonauts Talgat A. Musabayev and Nikolai M. Budarin, trying for a third time, successfully stabilized a bent solar panel during a spacewalk of 4 hours and 15 minutes. The solar panel was only one of 10 nonfunctioning panels. The crew had not intended to repair the damaged panel fully, but only to stabilize it, so that it would not break loose and hit the space station. The cosmonauts cut short the spacewalk, scheduled to take 5%hours, when the thruster engine aligning Mir with the Sun ran out of fuel. Forced to return to the space station early, the cosmonauts were unable to remove some scientific equipment attached to the outside of the station.
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