Василий Ласовский 19+ SE

Open sources on the Internet report this event in different ways:

"1973 — The discovery of an object resembling the head of the Sphinx on Mars, photographed by the American Viking spacecraft. Thirteen years later, Halley's Comet passed close to Earth."

"July 25, 1976 the American interplanetary probe Viking 1 transmitted photographs of the Martian surface to Earth. NASA specialists analyzed the images and, in an area approximately 3 km (1.86 mi) length and 1.5 km (0.93 mi) width, discovered something resembling a human face. For some reason, and as it later turned out, rather recklessly, six days later NASA decided to issue a press release announcing this quirk of nature."

(link in Russian)

https://www.kp.ru/daily/23935/70196/

"On July 25, 1976 the American spacecraft Viking 1 photographed Mars to help specialists select landing sites for future expeditions. Among the images captured was a picture of the Cydonia region, located on Acidalia Planitia with the same unevenness.

Legend has it that scientists, upon discovering the artifact, hid it under a veil of secrecy to avoid alarming the public about aliens. Only one brave renegade—a computer expert named Vincent Di Pietro—risked releasing the image three years later. <…>

It seems NASA itself started the Sphinx myth back in 1976. Then, a few years later, through the efforts of its own expert, Di Pietro—he worked for the agency under contract—it inflated the sensation, which had been weak on the first try. And now, from time to time, it drops ‘news.’ Everyone's happy. Moreover, scientists simply need to print out cards of the infamous ‘irregularity’—fans of the anomalous will find what they need there themselves."

Thus, we have two versions of events:

The first (official) version is that the photograph was found and published in late July 1976. The second version is that the photograph was obtained in 1973, but they decided to publish it in 1976.

But what really happened?

Mariner 9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_9

"Mariner 9 was designed to continue the atmospheric studies begun by Mariner 6 and 7, and to map over 70% of the Martian surface from the lowest altitude (1,500 kilometers (930 mi)) and at the highest resolutions (from 1 kilometer to 100 meters (1,100 to 110 yards) per pixel) of any Mars mission up to that point. <…>

Main surface imaging did not get underway until mid-January 1972. <…>

After 349 days in orbit, Mariner 9 had transmitted 7,329 images, covering 85% of Mars's surface [with a resolution of 1 to 2 km (2% of the surface was photographed with a resolution of 100 to 300 metres)], whereas previous flyby missions had returned less than one thousand images covering only a small portion of the planetary surface. The images revealed river beds, craters, massive extinct volcanoes (such as Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the Solar System; Mariner 9 led directly to its reclassification from Nix Olympica), canyons (including the Valles Marineris, a system of canyons over about 4,020 kilometres (2,500 mi) long), evidence of wind erosion and deposition, weather fronts, fogs, and more. Mars's small moons, Phobos and Deimos, were also photographed.

The findings from the Mariner 9 mission underpinned the later Viking program.

The enormous Valles Marineris canyon system is named after Mariner 9 in honor of its achievements.

After depleting its supply of attitude control gas, the spacecraft was turned off on October 27, 1972."

The Russians also participated in the space race to Mars. But they were unlucky:

The Mars Mystery (Graham Hancock, John Grigsby, 1998)

https://grahamhancock.com/mars-mystery/

"As the Mars landers were consumed in the global dust storm below, Mariner 9 drifted silently in orbit, dormant, conserving its energy.

Meanwhile the Mars 2 and 3 orbiter modules, from which the unsuccessful landers had been deployed, snapped away at the Red Planet in a whir of irreversible, preprogrammed activity—and sent back to a devastated Russian team picture upon picture of dust clouds.

In December 1971, as the storm subsided, Mariner 9’s systems were switched back on. Unlike its Russian counterparts, its computer was programmable after launch, and thus its mission could be altered as it went along. Such flexibility meant that this orbiter, of all the craft that had been launched that May, was the only one to succeed in its mission.

Mariner 9 approached Mars to 1,370 kilometers and began mapping the southern hemisphere from 25 degrees to 65 degrees south. It continued with up to 25 degrees of the northern hemisphere. By the time that it ran out of fuel on 27 October 1972, it had captured 7,239 stunning images of Mars—with sufficient resolution to reveal surface features as small as a football field. <…>

Inspired by the revelations from Mariner 9 that Mars could once have been habitable, NASA dedicated the Viking missions to the ‘search for life on Mars.’ For the most part this search was carried out by means of high-resolution photographs of large areas of the planet’s surface, analysis of the structure and composition of the atmosphere, and chemical tests on soil samples gathered by the landers."

(link in Russian)

https://ru.echo.az/?p=66885

"In 1972, Mariner 9 discovered formations resembling a ‘field of quadrangular pyramids’ in the Elysium Planum region. In the south polar region, Mariner 9 captured geometrically regular structures resembling artificial structures. <…>

Another unusual photograph was taken in 1976 by Viking 1 in the northern hemisphere near Cydonia, where more ‘ruins’ resembling Egyptian pyramids are believed to be located.

However, the most intriguing of the Martian formations was discovered approximately 9 kilometers east of the Cydonia ‘pyramids.’ NASA released this photo, which shows a structure resembling a human face."

An important point: in my opinion, Spirit may be taking into account that decoding the images will take time, so the photography must take place in advance. Plus, this unexpected, seemingly random dust storm on Mars lasting six months (September 22, 1971 – January 10, 1972) fits perfectly with the theory that the spacecraft arrived too early and, with the help of the storm, Spirit delayed the start of photographing of the Red Planet. Furthermore, the storm could well have changed the appearance of Mars, allowing the desired pattern to emerge on the surface.

Interestingly, Mariner 9's mission was specifically to photograph and map the entire (!) surface of Mars in great detail. And I think it accomplished that task admirably. Of course, there was a possibility that the photography would either miss the desired area (after all, 85% of the planet's surface was photographed, meaning 15% of the planet's surface was unphotographed), or that no one would see the desired message after the images were deciphered.

While preparing for the second edition of the book in June 2026, I asked Google AI a question about the topic, and it initially wrote that if there had been a photograph of this region, the Face on Mars would have accounted for only 1-2 pixels, and therefore would have been considered as a digital noise (garbage). Then it reported that there are no official photos at all (after all, if they are not published, then they do not exist), and for some reason the spacecraft allegedly ‘missed’ this section of the surface of Mars.

Google AI reported that there was confusion back then, and the Pyramids of the Elysium region were confused with the pyramids of the Cydonia region. I compared the sizes of the Elysium pyramids and found that they matched the sizes of the Face on Mars, after which Google AI said that it was mistaken, and if the Elysium pyramids could have been photographed with an image area from 400 to 900 pixels, then the Face on Mars could have received from 400 to 600 pixels (if photographed with the second, narrow-angle camera of Mariner 9, which, according to official data, photographed only 2% of the territory of Mars).

I also learned that photographing the Cydonia region was the second major component of Viking 1's mission in 1976, after it had successfully launched its lander to Mars. And it was urgent, because Viking 2 was arriving in a week and they needed to see the landing site, which was supposed to be exactly in Cydonia.

Another quote from the book The Mars Mystery (Graham Hancock, John Grigsby, 1998)

https://grahamhancock.com/mars-mystery/

"Now attention shifted to finding a suitable site for Viking 2’s lander. This is how Carl Sagan tells the story:

‘The candidate landing latitude for Viking 2 was 44 degrees north. The prime site, a locale named Cydonia, was chosen because, according to some theoretical arguments, there was a significant chance of small quantities of liquid water there, at least at some time during the Martian year. Since the Viking biology experiments were strongly oriented toward organisms that are comfortable in liquid water, some scientists held that the chance of Viking finding life would be substantially improved in Cydonia.’

Sagan and his colleagues were about to come literally face to face with something that looked very much like a sign of life—but not the kind of sign, nor the kind of life, they had imagined. Indeed, what they found was so beyond their comprehension that it was immediately dubbed an illusion and was not allowed to influence the final choice of a landing site for Viking 2. <…>

The next development was a decision from NASA that Viking 2 would not, after all, land at Cydonia.

Apparently the site was now deemed ‘unsafe.’ According to Carl Sagan:

‘44 degrees north was completely inaccessible to radar site-certification; we had to accept a significant risk of failure with Viking 2 if it was committed to high northern latitudes…. To improve the Viking options, additional landing sites, geologically very different from Chryse and Cydonia, were selected in the radar certified region near 4 degrees south latitude.’

All this notwithstanding, it is an extraordinary fact that Viking 2 was finally set down at a latitude even higher than Cydonia. It landed—and was almost overturned by boulders—on the distinctly unpromising rock-strewn plain called Utopia, at 47.7 degrees north latitude, on 3 September 1976. Thus—for no obvious reason says James Hurtak—‘a multimillion-dollar effort may have overlooked "paydirt" and may have become a trivial event…. A poor selective factor had been used to choose an area of minor geological and biological significance. It was like choosing the Sahara Desert as a suitable landing site on our own planet.’

Why choose Utopia over Cydonia when NASA’s own criteria mark both sites as equally ‘unsafe,’ and when the former is bland and uninteresting while the latter has rumors of water and the mystery of the Face? The question is a nagging one, because even if we accept Gerry Soffen’s instant dismissal of the Face as a trick of light and shadow, Cydonia still looks like a far more interesting site than Utopia.

Frankly we find the decision to land at Utopia baffling. But we are even more perplexed by the abrupt way that Cydonia was dropped as the preferred site so soon after the discovery of the Face on frame 35A72. It could be a coincidence."

This link contains a photo of a Martian pyramid taken by Mariner 9. The Face on Mars photos would have been just as clear if they had been taken by the same spacecraft in 1972.

Three-Sided Pyramidal Formation in the Western Region of Candor (Chasma Haas GJ, Saunders WR, Miller JS and Dale MA)

https://www.tsijournals.com/articles/threesided-pyramidal-formation-in-the-western-region-of-candor-chasma-13507.html

"On May 30, 1971 the Mariner 9 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and reached the planet Mars on November 14. After months of delays caused by annoying dust storms the spacecraft was eventually able to send back over 7,000 images of the Martian surface. One image taken of the Elysium area appeared to include a three-sided pyramidal formation (Figure 1) that caught the attention of world renowned astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan, intrigued by the shape of the pyramidal structure, presented the image at the Royal Institution in London during his Christmas Lecture in 1977. He also featured the image in his 1980 book and television series Cosmos in which he made the following comment:

‘The largest Mars Pyramids have a base width of 3 km and a height of 1 km, so they are much larger than the Pyramids of Sumer, Egypt and Mexico. With the ancient eroded shape, they could be small hills, sandblasted for centuries, but they need to be viewed from nearby.’

Figure 1: Three-sided pyramidal formation. Elysium area of Mars. Mariner 9 image 4205-78, 1972, detail."

Based on the Mariner 9 photograph of the pyramid, I conclude that if Cydonia had been fully photographed in 1972 (and Google AI reported that it was only a general shot, and the section with the Face was somehow missed), then in addition to the pyramids, an oval patch of unevenness (elevation) would have been clearly visible, and perhaps even something resembling the Face's nose. That is, even if such a beautiful image of the Face hadn't produced a wow effect, as in the 1976 images, it's quite possible there would have been something of interest to scientists, which could have been provisionally named "the Sphinx" (since something unusual was discovered very close to the pyramids, 9 km away, and the only thing that could be close to the pyramids is the Sphinx, right?).

Considering that the "Myth of the Sphinx" was very profitable for NASA, it helped to get funding for subsequent flights to Mars, it is likely that they did see something in 1973, and then sent a new mission to film the phenomenon with higher clarity, and even land a lander there to study it.

So what was really there? I think it was nothing more than a play of light and shadow on the rocky outcrop. But that doesn't matter, since the underlying message was heard—people saw the Face of the Sphinx in the photograph and associated Nostradamus's prophecy (original or fake one) with this event.

Here, Viking 1 was moved back in time by 3 years:

Prophecies of Ancient Astrologers (chapter from the book "Globa’s School" by Pavel Globa, 1990, link in Russian)

http://astro.kh.ua/04/предсказания-древних/11/

"In 1973, the American spacecraft Viking photographed something resembling the head of a sphinx, 350 meters tall, on the surface of Mars. 1973 + 13 years = 1986. Indeed, Halley's Comet approached Earth in 1986. Two weeks after its closest approach, an accident occurred at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This was on April 26, 1986. The numerological code applied to Nostradamus's prophecies indicates that disasters due to nuclear waste are to be expected between 1986 and 1991."

Nostradamus’s Prophecies

[This chapter was revised in December 2025 in preparation for the 2nd edition of the book.]

Michel de Nostredame (in French), also known as Nostradamus (December 14, 1503 – July 2, 1566) was a French astrologer, physician, pharmacist, and alchemist, famous for his prophecies.

A free translation of Nostradamus's poetry and prose from Old French was made by Vyacheslav Zavallishin, a Russian emigrant who published the book "Nostradamus. Centuries" in 1974 in New York (or, more likely, it is a later forgery from the 1990s–2000s under the same translator). I'll note that the poems below were popular in the Russian segment of the Internet; in Europe, they may not even know that Nostradamus had such prophecies :).

An important point: these poems were indeed published in newspapers in the 1990s. I read them myself at the time. So, for me the existence of these poems is an objective reality (regardless of their authorship and the time of their writing). They simply existed in the cultural consciousness of the masses at a certain time.

And is the information currently available on the Internet an objective reality? Of course, it is, but with some caveats. I take into account that it can be easily corrected, and therefore, in my opinion, the advantage is given to a faded paper page in a real newspaper or magazine from the 1990s over a constantly edited page on the modern Internet if there is a discrepancy in the facts between them.

(links in Russian)

https://nostradamu.narod.ru/publ/3-1-0-47

https://nostradamu.narod.ru/publ/3-1-0-48

https://nostradamu.narod.ru/BD/Zaval.html

https://hiromant.com/threads/neobyknovennye-predskazanija-mishelja-nostradamusa.1450/

https://ria.ru/20060425/46899364.html

https://stihi.ru/2007/11/23/2803

"The face of the Sphinx will be revealed on the Red Planet,

That brought many troubles to the peoples,

In 13 years a comet will arrive,

And five new disasters take away people."

"The tail of a terrible comet will hit the Earth.