The Phobos program was an unmanned space mission consisting of two probes launched by the Soviet Union to study Mars and its moons Phobos and Deimos. Phobos 1 launched on July 7, 1988, and Phobos 2 on July 12, 1988, each aboard a Proton-K rocket.
Phobos 1 suffered a terminal failure en route to Mars. Phobos 2 attained Mars orbit and returned 38 images with a resolution of up to 40 meters, but contact was lost prior to deployment of a planned Phobos lander.
Everything was going according to plan with Phobos 2, the spacecraft aligned itself with Phobos and then, suddenly strange things started happening. On the 28th March, the Soviet mission control center acknowledged sudden communication “problems” with the Phobos 2 and Tass (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) , the official Soviet news agency, reported “Phobos 2 had failed to communicate with Earth as scheduled after completing an operation yesterday around the Martian moon Phobos. Scientists at mission control have been unable to establish stable radio contact.”
So what could have happened to cause the Phobos 2 spacecraft to malfunction?
Phobos 2 returned some images of the Martian surface and in one of those images a shadow of what appears to be a disk shaped object is clearly seen in the image. Dr. Becklake described it as “something that is between the spacecraft and Mars, because we can see the Martian surface below it,” and stressed that the object was seen by both the optical and the infrared (heat seeking) camera. So what could have been “interfering” with the photo-shoot of the Red Planet? According to many, this image is proof of extraterrestrial contact.
Just before Phobos 2 went “offline” the spacecraft returned to Earth some very strange images that have caused mixed opinions and a lot of chatter in the years to follow.
Until today no official explanation has been given to the strange images returned from Phobos 2. Boris Bolitsky, science correspondent for Radio Moscow described the images and the content as “Quite remarkable features”.
The last image the Spacecraft managed to return to earth (shown below). the images shows a huge object just under the moon Phobos. The object seen in the images is several kilometers in length approx 20 km. Strangely, the “thin ellipse” seen in the image above, is also approx 20 km in length according to scientists. Several explanations were given to the image.
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Some claim that the object is nothing more than “camera artifacts” and “lens malfunction”. Others, such as Marina Popovich, a famous Soviet test pilot who has long been interested in UFO’s, claims this object to be a Unidentified Flying object of Alien origin.
After that last frame was radio-transmitted back to Earth, the probe mysteriously disappeared and according to many Russians, Phobos 2 was destroyed.
The cigar shaped craft in the penultimate frame taken by Phobos 2 is apparently the object casting the oblong shadow on the surface of Mars in the earlier photo.
Was Phobos 2 “shot down” because of these images? because the “little” spacecraft saw to much? Did Phobos 2 interfere with “someone” orbiting Mars? In his careful words to ‘Aviation Week and Space Technology’, the chairman of the Soviet equivalent of NASA, referred to the last frame, saying,
“One image appears to include an odd-shaped object between the spacecraft and Mars.”
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