Ancient Aliens s04e05 Episode Script
The NASA Connection
NARRATOR: Unexplained sightings in space SETH SHOSTAK: Shuttle astronauts will report that they've seen things that might be due to an alien presence.
NARRATOR: strange formations on the surface of Mars ERICH VON DANIKEN: Now, some NASA scientists say this is all just a light and shadow game.
NARRATOR: .
.
and lunar missions rumored to have secret agendas.
LOGAN HAWKES: The race for the Moon, was it a race to reach technology that was left behind by an extraterrestrial race? NARRATOR: Is NASA sharing all that it knows about the universe? Or are they protecting us from the truth? MICHAEL BARA: The Brookings Report says very specifically, number one, don't tell anybody.
If you tell anybody, it will shatter the fabric of our civilization.
NARRATOR: Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.
What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And, if so, might our extraterrestrial origins be revealed through the NASA connection? NARRATOR: July 20, 1969.
Okay, engine stop.
We copy you down, Eagle.
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
NARRATOR: American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first humans to land on the Moon.
"That's one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind.
" BUZZ ALDRIN: We aliens who happened to go down the ladder on July 20, magnificent race that was able to all of sudden appear in the garden of Eden.
STORY MUSGRAVE: Landing on the Moon happened because of courage.
We had the courage.
We were willing to take the risk.
We had a president who was behind us and said you're gonna do it.
DAVID MORRISON: I look at those people from the Apollo era as heroes, not just the astronauts that went, but the hundred thousand people on the ground that made it possible.
They worked on an exact plan.
They knew where they wanted to go.
greatest scientific technical accomplishment in human history.
Houston, it's Tranquility, how do you read? Tranquility Base, this is Houston, loud and clear.
NARRATOR: For more than two and a half hours, Armstrong and Aldrin stood on the surface of the Moon.
Video transmissions showed the two astronauts collecting rock samples, taking photographs, and planting an American flag in the lunar soil.
But what might these men have done away from the camera? Could there have been another, perhaps, top-secret mission, as ancient astronaut theorists believe? DAVID CHILDRESS: When Apollo there were certain sites that they were to look at.
And even as they orbited the Moon there were certain areas of the Moon that they were to examine carefully and photograph.
And you have to ask yourself if NASA already had certain parts of the Moon picked out, and the reason they had picked out these areas was because there was artificial structures on the Moon and they knew it.
NARRATOR: According to NASA records, the area of the Moon called the Sea of Tranquility was chosen for the first lunar landing based on its flat surface.
But some researchers suggest this site was chosen because on that date, its coordinates lined up directly under Orion's Belt.
BARA: The way they picked the landing sites was that they first chose the specific date, the specific latitude and longitude, the specific time that they would land.
And then you have to work your way back from that to create what's called the launch window.
The person who picked all of the Apollo landing dates and landing times, including the mission for Apollo His father just happened to be an expert on the ancient Egyptian stellar religion.
NARRATOR: According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, ceremonies performed directly under Orion's Belt produce a sacred alignment, one through which humans could communicate with Osiris.
BARA: To the ancient Egyptians, that constellation actually was a literal living embodiment of the great god Osiris.
Sirius was the same representation of his wife, sister and consort, Isis.
Together, those two essentially ruled the skies, and the life of the Egyptian people themselves was dictated by the rotation, the movement and the placement of those two celestial objects in the heavens.
BARA: Apollo 11 had landed at a specific day and a specific time where the three belt stars of Orion were on the horizon.
At that time, 33 minutes after landing, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, a 33 Degree Scottish Rite Freemason was, in fact, performing a ceremony on board the lunar module with Neil Armstrong.
What they were doing was pouring wine into chalices, breaking bread and doing what essentially is called a communion ceremony.
Now the interesting thing about the communion ceremony is that although its Catholic, it actually has its origins in a much deeper, farther back ritual which was an offering to the god Osiris himself.
So they are performing, essentially, an offering to Osiris himself.
So I think that's why that they landed on the Moon at that date and time.
PHILIP COPPENS: Certain rituals have to be performed at certain moments in time, whereby this link with this nonhuman intelligence will happen.
The priestly class of our ancestors, either through technology or through certain means, really were very much the class which sought out contact with this nonhuman intelligence.
And they were the ones who were trained to do this, very much like the scientists of today, which we have trained to be the people who are going to go into outer space.
NARRATOR: Left behind on the Moon were scientific instruments, an American flag, and a small plaque commemorating the Apollo 11 mission.
But there were other items left as well, a bag containing a gold replica of an olive branch, and a silicon disk with recorded messages of peace and goodwill from 73 world leaders.
Why were these symbolic messages sent up into space? Who was NASA expecting to meet on the Moon? HAWKES: When we talk about the Apollo Moon mission, there's some theory that suggest that massive cities may exist on the dark side of the Moon, cities that NASA was aware of, that the Moon missions were all about and that artifacts from these ancient ruin sites have been brought back to Earth.
Is it possible it wasn't Moon rocks we were picking up and bringing back as specimens, but perhaps alien technology? VON DANIKEN: If extraterrestrials were here on planet, I'm sure they were here, we should also find evidence on the Moon because the Moon is the place for a stopover.
You have a mother spaceship.
You need some sort of refuel.
Whatever this refuel is, could be raw material, could be stone, could be uranium, could be whatever is in the surface of the Moon.
So it would make sense that we find some indications on the Moon, technological indications, that somebody was here.
NARRATOR: Over the past several years, officials with NASA's space program have admitted to misplacing original recordings of some Moon landings, and losing rocks collected from the lunar surface.
Could this be, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, lost evidence of possible alien contact? Some claim that photos NASA has taken of both the Moon and Mars indicate they know more than they are telling us.
DAVID ICKE: We're going to have to come to terms with the with the fact that we have been told the most monumental collective lie, all our lives, about technologically-advanced, nonhuman groups that are fundamentally impacting upon life on Earth.
And you will find the evidence for that on the far side of the Moon, and no doubt, Mars, too.
BARA: Every time you look at a photograph from an unmanned probe of the planet Mars, there's almost always something truly weird that doesn't belong there that looks structural.
Carl Sagan himself used to talk about the pyramids of Elysium, which were these very large, tetrahedral pyramids on Mars.
VON DANIKEN: We have some strange pictures from the surface of the back of the Moon and from the surface of Mars.
Some strange pictures which seems to show artificial stuff, some ancient buildings.
On Mars, we had one day photograph by Mariner, we had a face on Mars.
And in later picture, the face did not exist anymore.
But around the face, there was still something like a gate.
Now, some NASA scientists say this is all just a light and shadow game.
Others, also from NASA, say the pyramids are real on Mars.
So, at this moment, I don't know what is true.
BARA: There are some people that think that with the Roswell crash, that the US government established communications with extraterrestrial beings.
There are some who think that we did not establish such contact until the Apollo missions themselves.
And there are other people who think that we really don't have any direct contact with extraterrestrial species.
My personal belief is that at some point along the way, NASA did have a direct pipeline to the ETs.
NARRATOR: But if NASA has possessed evidence of extraterrestrial life, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, what are they hiding? NARRATOR: Might NASA really have found evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life on the Moon? And could there be further proof of an alien presence as witnessed by astronauts on the space shuttle and the International Space Station? NARRATOR: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California On December 5, 2011, astronomers working with the Kepler space telescope announced the discovery of a planet they called Kepler-22b, orbiting within what's known as the habitable zone of a distant star.
SIMON P.
WORDEN: Today's discovery is a tantalizing indication that, with time, Kepler may find true earth analogs.
SETH SHOSTAK: Kepler-22b is about 600 light-years away from Earth, so that's a long way.
But it is, in fact, in an orbit that means that the daytime temperatures on that planet might be comparable to a summer in San Francisco, so that's the first time we found a planet that might have liquid oceans, maybe a thick atmosphere, maybe even life.
DAVID MORRISON, PH.
D.
: What we'd ultimately like to do, first, is just understand how other planetary systems are made up.
But then, we really would like to find Earth-like planets.
Planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars.
NARRATOR: But is it possible that NASA scientists have been searching for life they already know exists? Some believe previous voyages into space have uncovered evidence of an extraterrestrial presence.
Houston, Discovery, how do you read? Over.
Discovery, Houston, read you loud and clear.
Go for main engines start.
Main engines up and burning.
Three, two, one, zero and liftoff! Roger.
Roll, Discovery.
NARRATOR: On September 12, Discovery STS-48 flew nearly 350 miles above the surface of the Earth.
Its crew, led by Captain John Creighton, performed several missions, including the deployment of an upper atmosphere research satellite.
He is go for free drift.
Okay, we're in free drift.
NARRATOR: But while the astronauts occupied themselves with various tasks, a video camera at the rear cargo bay door captured footage that NASA claims no longer exists.
But a number of amateurs who were directly monitoring the transmissions have produced what they allege is genuine footage from STS-48.
The video shows what appears to be a series of unidentified glowing objects and flashing lights that change direction and accelerate rapidly.
CHILDRESS: Apparently, the space shuttle was surrounded by some kind of UFO, flying saucer type of craft, some kind of a shield, at one point, was supposedly put around the shuttle briefly, and then, the UFO and everything disappeared.
BARA: One of the astronauts openly states over an open channel, "Hey, we're being tracked by an alien spacecraft.
" (rhythmic beeping) Then all of a sudden, all the transmission just ceases.
And I think what happened was, is that he must have realized he was on the public channel, not the private channel, and he probably very, very quickly switched over to the private channel to describe what it was he was seeing.
MUSGRAVE: I knew everyone, and I heard stories from everyone.
Nobody brought me any evidence.
So, one side of the coin it's everywhere out there.
Has it been here? I have no evidence.
NARRATOR: NASA officials claim the video images show ice particles glinting in the sun.
But is it possible that video transmissions from the space shuttle captured more than what NASA officials want to admit? SHOSTAK: Occasionally, astronauts, shuttle astronauts, will report that they've seen things or experienced things in space that they can't explain and that might be due to an alien presence.
GIORGIO A.
TSOUKALOS: Ever since humankind launched itself into space, there have been reports where astronauts describe something that they saw while being up in the spaceship.
And we have to remind ourselves that those stories were reported by astronauts, and not by some kind of crazy people.
NARRATOR: In 1996, video captured aboard the space shuttle Columbia STS-80 reportedly shows a number of fast-moving objects just outside the craft.
These unidentified objects appear as bright streaks.
Analysis of their speeds and directions have prompted some researchers to dismiss the claims that the objects were shuttle debris or meteors.
BARA: There's space shuttle video of two very specific missions STS-48 and STS-80 which clearly show what appear to be powered vehicles operating in low earth orbit, defying all the laws of physics and clearly performing the way UFOs or extraterrestrial spacecraft are supposedly able to perform.
NARRATOR: But American astronauts are not the only space travelers reporting otherworldly encounters.
In 1985, Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7 reported seeing seven celestial beings orbiting Earth.
CHILDRESS: Six cosmonauts claimed that, as they looked out of the window of the space station, they saw what they described as winged angels surrounding their ship, and that these were luminous beings looking like people but also having bizarrely wings on them, and they're in space.
So you have to wonder, what's going on here, and were these angels some kind of extraterrestrials in special space suits or with fields around them, and they were investigating the Soviet space station? And then suddenly, bang, they just vanished.
NARRATOR: If reports from trained scientists are true, is this proof that extraterrestrial intelligence has been trying to contact us? SEAN DAVID MORTON: Gordon Cooper approached the United Nations about them actually setting up a bureau at the United Nations for extraterrestrial contact.
EDGAR MITCHELL: This is not unknown knowledge.
There are people that know and there seems to be perhaps several different species of aliens visiting here, and it looks like, likely, they have been for a long, long time.
NARRATOR: Might NASA really be withholding classified information regarding the existence of extraterrestrial beings? Perhaps the answer can be found by taking a look at NASA's curious origins.
NARRATOR: July 29, 1958.
Responding to the successful launch of the Soviet space satellite Sputnik, President Dwight Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, officially establishing NASA.
MORRISON: NASA was formed in existing government agency called NACA that just dealt with aeronautics and then with the early space program that was being developed by the army and the air force.
MITCHELL: NASA was established to take the United States into space and to be a contender in the new direction that humanity was moving of exploring space and out into our solar system.
NARRATOR: The president and congress established NASA as part of the Department of Defense.
The official reason was to prevent the Soviets from stealing U.
S.
technology, but some believe the real motive for this classification was not to hide information from the Soviets but to keep it secret from the American public.
BARA: A lot of people have the idea that NASA is a civilian science agency, and it's not.
It says right there in the act of Congress that created it, anything that they discover is subject to classification and being kept secret and being kept from the American people.
The Brookings Report, which was commissioned by NASA right after NASA itself was created, essentially was commissioned for the purpose of deciding what NASA should do if in fact they made some sort of extraterrestrial contact if they either found artifacts on the Moon or on Mars or if they had direct contact with a superior intelligence, what they should do, and the Brookings Report says very specifically, number one, don't tell anybody.
If you tell anybody, it will shatter the fabric of our civilization.
It will destroy us.
NARRATOR: Some researchers believe the evidence of NASA's hidden agenda can be found in the close ties between its founding scientists and secret societies.
BARA: These secret societies had at their core essentially a belief that they were directly descended from these great gods of ancient Egypt, Isis, Osiris, and Horus, and they considered these gods to be truly the source of their bloodline but also that these gods themselves came from space.
At the very top, you had the Freemasons.
You had James Webb, who was a director of NASA.
You had a man named Kenneth Kleinknecht, who was the head of the Mercury Program, the Apollo Program, the Gemini Program.
He was a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason.
Below them, you had the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, or followers of Aleister Crowley.
People like Jack Parsons down at JPL were all put together, and so they all ended up under the very same roof with the very same agenda and the very same belief system.
HAWKES: We see this practice of passing knowledge down through a secret society go back all the way to the days of the Illuminati who believed that a select few of the elite were smart enough, were capable of handling this secret knowledge but not the population at large.
So the question remains, has this knowledge been passed down through secret societies for generations? And this may predate the secret societies that we know about in modern times all the way back to the days of the pharaohs.
NARRATOR: Like the ancient Egyptians, could NASA's founding fathers have shared the belief that humans descended from extraterrestrial beings? What did the members of these secret societies know about space travel? And how did the ancient past influence their work? Those who suspect these NASA officials operated a hidden agenda point to the repeated use of the number 33 an extremely important symbolic figure in secret societies.
BARA: If you look at the very first landing strip at Cape Canaveral, where we would be landing aircraft and eventually bringing the space shuttle back, it was runway 33.
If you look at the launchpad at White Sands, New Mexico, the only launchpad is launchpad number 33.
So it seems to permeate throughout NASA, this number over and over again, and the fact that it's connected to Freemasonry makes you kind of wonder if maybe there was some other deeper symbolism working.
Houston.
You are a go for landing.
Over.
NARRATOR: Researchers believe the connection to ancient Egyptian beliefs can also be found in the emblem of NASA's Apollo Space Program.
They claim that the large "A" in the star field stands not for the Greek god Apollo but for Asar the Egyptian god more commonly known as Osiris.
This is indicated by the cluster of three stars in the center of the "A," which represent the stars of Orion's Belt.
CHILDRESS: You have to wonder if stars like Orion and Sirius are very important to NASA, because this is where the ancient traditions, including Egyptian, have said that the space gods came from, this is our origins.
NARRATOR: Similarly, researchers point out that the symbol on the Mercury Mission patches is nearly identical to a major icon of ancient Egypt.
BARA: If you look at the mission patches, the symbol for Mercury is really similar to the Egyptian ankh, and it's kind of ironic that you have this sort of Egyptian symbolism in what's supposed to be a representation of Mercury the Messenger.
It's supposed to be a Greek mythology rather than an Egyptian mythology.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that, like ancient alien theorists, NASA scientists believe extraterrestrials visited Earth in the distant past? Perhaps further evidence can be found in the inventions of the unlikely mastermind behind NASA's space program former Nazi SS officer Wernher Von Braun.
NARRATOR: London, England.
September 8, 1944.
(missile whistling through air) (explosion) A 13-ton ballistic missile explodes on impact killing three and wounding 17.
The Vengeance Weapon 2, more commonly known as the V-2 rocket, had been fired from deep within Nazi Germany.
The liquid-propellant weapon proved to be the world's first long-range computer-guided missile, and the first man-made object to enter outer space.
This incredible technology was the brainchild of a man who would eventually become the face of NASA, a 32-year-old engineering genius named Wernher Von Braun.
HENRY STEVENS: Dr.
Von Braun was acknowledged by everyone as the greatest scientific mind in Germany.
He found a way to steer a rocket at 4,000 miles an hour.
He put a combustion chamber that was cooled by the liquid fuel itself, and redesigned the fuel chamber, and he put a guidance system on it.
He was an expert at every facet of rocketry, which is really unheard of.
NARRATOR: Von Braun's passion for rocketry began at an early age.
As a youth, he read science fiction novels by H.
G.
Wells and Jules Verne, and was exposed to mythical stories of the Norse god Tyr, a sky god that ruled over Mars and provided knowledge and technology to humans.
COPPENS: Wernher Von Braun, from childhood, was absolutely convinced that we had to go "out there.
" It possessed him.
And so he was absolutely convinced that mankind had a mission, and also that he had a role to perform.
He feels absolutely confident that he will be able to go to Mars, find evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization there, and from then onwards, will actually go further into space to do this.
MUSGRAVE: Von Braun wanted to go into space.
He wanted to go to the stars.
But then, of course, he got so good at rocketry, the Germans wanted him dropping V-2's on London.
He was very good at that.
NARRATOR: During World War II Von Braun worked as the technical director at Germany's Peenemunde Research Center, where he built rockets not for space travel but as weapons of war.
His brilliance as a rocket scientist earned him a spot in the SS, among Hitler's most trusted scientists and officers.
BARA: Hitler's SS was nothing more than a secret society.
What the SS believed was that the Aryan himself was this direct, pure bloodline that came from Isis and Osiris and Horus and Seth.
Von Braun learned about the myths of the superiority of the Aryan race and their rightful place in the stars and where they had come from.
So it makes complete sense that Von Braun would become fascinated with space.
The mission became to get back up to the stars, to rejoin the gods, to show them that we could do as they had done and travel to the stars, travel to the planets, and basically go back and reclaim our proper place in the universe.
NARRATOR: Although the V-2 rocket was far more advanced than any other fired during World War II, it was not enough to prevent Germany's defeat.
Six weeks after the last V-2 fell on England, Von Braun surrendered to the advancing American forces.
VON BRAUN: I myself, and everybody you see here, have decided to go west.
NARRATOR: Von Braun and his team of scientists were brought to the United States under a controversial classified program known as Operation Paperclip.
(camera shutter clicks) JIM MARRS: After the war, we decided that we were gonna be adversaries with the Soviet Union and that we needed to have the technological jump on them, so we brought these Nazi scientists over, whitewashed their Nazi background and rolled them into our military industrial complex.
NARRATOR: While continuing his work designing military missiles, Von Braun published a series of books and magazine articles that described his concepts for a lunar landing a manned mission to Mars and even an orbiting space station.
VON BRAUN: The entire wheel will slowly rotate at three revolutions per minute.
The resulting centrifugal force will produce an artificial gravity for the men in the rim.
Notice that the floors are placed so that the men stand with their heads towards the hub.
NARRATOR: But why was Von Braun so intent on traveling into space? MORTON: Wernher Von Braun was very much the public scientific face of the American space program.
He was obsessed, by the way, with not just going to the Moon but also going beyond that and eventually building colonies on Mars.
SHOSTAK: The deal was to build a rocket that didn't just go up a couple of hundred miles, but a rocket that could make it a quarter of a million miles, all the way to the Moon.
VON BRAUN: If we were to start today on an organized and well-supported space program, I believe a practical passenger rocket could be built and tested within ten years.
MUSGRAVE: Von Braun went to work on a Jupiter-C, which was an upgraded V-2.
But what is unbelievable is, he went from an upgraded V-2 to a Saturn F-1, which is even today, powerful and the most reliable and the best rocket engine that's ever existed, even though he did that 45 years ago.
NARRATOR: On May 5, 1961, less than three years after joining NASA, Von Braun stood watch as one of his rockets rockets carried Alan Shepard up into space.
President Kennedy announced his goal to send a man to the Moon.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
NARRATOR: But then, according to the National Security Action Memorandum number 271, JFK followed up his dramatic announcement by secretly proposing to merge NASA's space program with that of the Soviets.
But why, when it appeared that Americans were finally moving ahead in the race for space, would JFK offer to share technologies with America's rival? HAWKES: According to conspiracy theorists, it's because something was discovered along the way, and that discovery was alien visitation did exist, and they already knew about it.
The race for the Moon, was it a race between two nations, or was it a race by two nations to reach technology on the Moon that was left behind by an extraterrestrial race? NARRATOR: Is it possible Von Braun's rockets had drawn the attention of otherworldly beings, as some ancient astronaut theorists believe? What did NASA's scientists expect to find on the Moon? And might they also have been looking for evidence of life on Mars? NARRATOR: The Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Three, two, one.
Engines start.
NARRATOR: On November 26, 2011, scientists with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched their The Mars Science Laboratory is expected to enter the Martian atmosphere in August 2012.
After deploying its parachute and landing on the surface, an automobile-sized remote controlled rover named Curiosity will probe the Red Planet's past and present ability to sustain microbial life.
SHOSTAK: It's going to be able to roam around the surface of Mars.
It's pretty fast compared to our old rovers.
It can go the length of a football field in an hour.
But it can also analyze the surface of Mars and it's trying to find out, look, was there ever liquid water here, lakes, oceans, that kind of thing? What about the chemical composition of the soil? Is it the kind of thing that indicates that Mars was once a kinder, gentler world? It's not looking directly for life.
We still don't do that.
MORRISON: We have evidence that, although Mars is very cold now, has a very thin atmosphere, it once had a thick atmosphere, blue sky, clouds, rain, liquid water the ingredients we think would be possible for life.
So it's quite reasonable to imagine that life formed there long ago.
The question is: could the life have survived as the planet got colder? Could it have gone below the surface, for instance? We think so.
NARRATOR: If Wernher Von Braun's visions of space travel could become reality and land a man on the Moon, could his concept of human travel to Mars become a fact as well? And might NASA still be secretly developing his ideas plans first drawn up nearly 60 years ago? BARA: If you look at the research that was being done in field dynamics and very, very exotic physics back in the 1950s and even into the early 1960s, it's pretty clear that we were on a very exciting path towards very, very powerful breakthrough propulsion systems that would essentially allow us to create flying saucers that could travel very easily and very short amounts of time between the Earth and the Moon and between the Earth and Mars, so it makes complete sense that we do have this secret private program that maybe even a lot of the guys inside NASA themselves don't know about.
ROBERT H.
FRISBEE: In the more near term, NASA and other space agencies talk about moving out into the solar system, and there we're looking at using a variety of extraterrestrial materials to produce propellants for rockets, oxygen for life support, even building materials.
CHILDRESS: Many researchers believe that the overt NASA missions are really a cover for what they call a secret space program and that the secret space program is using different technology than rockets, more of an alien-type technology, some kind of antigravity type of craft, and that those craft, rather than rockets, could be going to bases on the Moon that would be secret bases, also manned by the American government or the secret space program, and that from those bases on the Moon, we could even be journeying in these retro engineered spacecraft to Mars.
NARRATOR: According to scientists, the possibility of transforming Mars into an Earth like planet is theoretically possible.
MUSGRAVE: I think Mars is terraformable.
Terraforming means to take life to a place that has no life and start growing the life there.
I think Mars is unbelievably terraformable.
MORRISON: I can't imagine we'll ever reach a destination that answers all our questions, but as an astrobiologist, I think in the next 25 or 30 years, we have a very good chance of finding evidence of life beyond Earth.
There's a real prospect we'll be able to answer that fundamental question: are we alone? NARRATOR: Most NASA scientists agree that future exploration of space will uncover life on other planets.
But could it also reveal proof that the gods of the ancient world were, in fact, extraterrestrials, as ancient astronaut theorists believe? BARA: NASA'S real core mission in the beginning was essentially to go to the Moon, retrieve evidence of the fact that there was a prior advanced civilization in the solar system, and bring it back.
In other words, prove that, in fact, we are descended from these gods Isis, Osiris, Horus, and Seth.
Now that that goal has been accomplished, NASA's purpose seems to be to be part of this very, very slow revelation of information.
TSOUKALOS: NASA asks the question of human origins.
Where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going? They're dealing with space.
And according to the ancient alien theory our origins are not here on Earth but up there.
Space truly is the final frontier.
NARRATOR: If ancient knowledge guided us to the Moon, what might the ancient past reveal about our future here on Earth? And with NASA's continuing explorations of space, might we finally find proof of alien beings? Or proof of our own alien origins?
NARRATOR: strange formations on the surface of Mars ERICH VON DANIKEN: Now, some NASA scientists say this is all just a light and shadow game.
NARRATOR: .
.
and lunar missions rumored to have secret agendas.
LOGAN HAWKES: The race for the Moon, was it a race to reach technology that was left behind by an extraterrestrial race? NARRATOR: Is NASA sharing all that it knows about the universe? Or are they protecting us from the truth? MICHAEL BARA: The Brookings Report says very specifically, number one, don't tell anybody.
If you tell anybody, it will shatter the fabric of our civilization.
NARRATOR: Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.
What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And, if so, might our extraterrestrial origins be revealed through the NASA connection? NARRATOR: July 20, 1969.
Okay, engine stop.
We copy you down, Eagle.
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
NARRATOR: American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first humans to land on the Moon.
"That's one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind.
" BUZZ ALDRIN: We aliens who happened to go down the ladder on July 20, magnificent race that was able to all of sudden appear in the garden of Eden.
STORY MUSGRAVE: Landing on the Moon happened because of courage.
We had the courage.
We were willing to take the risk.
We had a president who was behind us and said you're gonna do it.
DAVID MORRISON: I look at those people from the Apollo era as heroes, not just the astronauts that went, but the hundred thousand people on the ground that made it possible.
They worked on an exact plan.
They knew where they wanted to go.
greatest scientific technical accomplishment in human history.
Houston, it's Tranquility, how do you read? Tranquility Base, this is Houston, loud and clear.
NARRATOR: For more than two and a half hours, Armstrong and Aldrin stood on the surface of the Moon.
Video transmissions showed the two astronauts collecting rock samples, taking photographs, and planting an American flag in the lunar soil.
But what might these men have done away from the camera? Could there have been another, perhaps, top-secret mission, as ancient astronaut theorists believe? DAVID CHILDRESS: When Apollo there were certain sites that they were to look at.
And even as they orbited the Moon there were certain areas of the Moon that they were to examine carefully and photograph.
And you have to ask yourself if NASA already had certain parts of the Moon picked out, and the reason they had picked out these areas was because there was artificial structures on the Moon and they knew it.
NARRATOR: According to NASA records, the area of the Moon called the Sea of Tranquility was chosen for the first lunar landing based on its flat surface.
But some researchers suggest this site was chosen because on that date, its coordinates lined up directly under Orion's Belt.
BARA: The way they picked the landing sites was that they first chose the specific date, the specific latitude and longitude, the specific time that they would land.
And then you have to work your way back from that to create what's called the launch window.
The person who picked all of the Apollo landing dates and landing times, including the mission for Apollo His father just happened to be an expert on the ancient Egyptian stellar religion.
NARRATOR: According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, ceremonies performed directly under Orion's Belt produce a sacred alignment, one through which humans could communicate with Osiris.
BARA: To the ancient Egyptians, that constellation actually was a literal living embodiment of the great god Osiris.
Sirius was the same representation of his wife, sister and consort, Isis.
Together, those two essentially ruled the skies, and the life of the Egyptian people themselves was dictated by the rotation, the movement and the placement of those two celestial objects in the heavens.
BARA: Apollo 11 had landed at a specific day and a specific time where the three belt stars of Orion were on the horizon.
At that time, 33 minutes after landing, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, a 33 Degree Scottish Rite Freemason was, in fact, performing a ceremony on board the lunar module with Neil Armstrong.
What they were doing was pouring wine into chalices, breaking bread and doing what essentially is called a communion ceremony.
Now the interesting thing about the communion ceremony is that although its Catholic, it actually has its origins in a much deeper, farther back ritual which was an offering to the god Osiris himself.
So they are performing, essentially, an offering to Osiris himself.
So I think that's why that they landed on the Moon at that date and time.
PHILIP COPPENS: Certain rituals have to be performed at certain moments in time, whereby this link with this nonhuman intelligence will happen.
The priestly class of our ancestors, either through technology or through certain means, really were very much the class which sought out contact with this nonhuman intelligence.
And they were the ones who were trained to do this, very much like the scientists of today, which we have trained to be the people who are going to go into outer space.
NARRATOR: Left behind on the Moon were scientific instruments, an American flag, and a small plaque commemorating the Apollo 11 mission.
But there were other items left as well, a bag containing a gold replica of an olive branch, and a silicon disk with recorded messages of peace and goodwill from 73 world leaders.
Why were these symbolic messages sent up into space? Who was NASA expecting to meet on the Moon? HAWKES: When we talk about the Apollo Moon mission, there's some theory that suggest that massive cities may exist on the dark side of the Moon, cities that NASA was aware of, that the Moon missions were all about and that artifacts from these ancient ruin sites have been brought back to Earth.
Is it possible it wasn't Moon rocks we were picking up and bringing back as specimens, but perhaps alien technology? VON DANIKEN: If extraterrestrials were here on planet, I'm sure they were here, we should also find evidence on the Moon because the Moon is the place for a stopover.
You have a mother spaceship.
You need some sort of refuel.
Whatever this refuel is, could be raw material, could be stone, could be uranium, could be whatever is in the surface of the Moon.
So it would make sense that we find some indications on the Moon, technological indications, that somebody was here.
NARRATOR: Over the past several years, officials with NASA's space program have admitted to misplacing original recordings of some Moon landings, and losing rocks collected from the lunar surface.
Could this be, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, lost evidence of possible alien contact? Some claim that photos NASA has taken of both the Moon and Mars indicate they know more than they are telling us.
DAVID ICKE: We're going to have to come to terms with the with the fact that we have been told the most monumental collective lie, all our lives, about technologically-advanced, nonhuman groups that are fundamentally impacting upon life on Earth.
And you will find the evidence for that on the far side of the Moon, and no doubt, Mars, too.
BARA: Every time you look at a photograph from an unmanned probe of the planet Mars, there's almost always something truly weird that doesn't belong there that looks structural.
Carl Sagan himself used to talk about the pyramids of Elysium, which were these very large, tetrahedral pyramids on Mars.
VON DANIKEN: We have some strange pictures from the surface of the back of the Moon and from the surface of Mars.
Some strange pictures which seems to show artificial stuff, some ancient buildings.
On Mars, we had one day photograph by Mariner, we had a face on Mars.
And in later picture, the face did not exist anymore.
But around the face, there was still something like a gate.
Now, some NASA scientists say this is all just a light and shadow game.
Others, also from NASA, say the pyramids are real on Mars.
So, at this moment, I don't know what is true.
BARA: There are some people that think that with the Roswell crash, that the US government established communications with extraterrestrial beings.
There are some who think that we did not establish such contact until the Apollo missions themselves.
And there are other people who think that we really don't have any direct contact with extraterrestrial species.
My personal belief is that at some point along the way, NASA did have a direct pipeline to the ETs.
NARRATOR: But if NASA has possessed evidence of extraterrestrial life, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, what are they hiding? NARRATOR: Might NASA really have found evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life on the Moon? And could there be further proof of an alien presence as witnessed by astronauts on the space shuttle and the International Space Station? NARRATOR: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California On December 5, 2011, astronomers working with the Kepler space telescope announced the discovery of a planet they called Kepler-22b, orbiting within what's known as the habitable zone of a distant star.
SIMON P.
WORDEN: Today's discovery is a tantalizing indication that, with time, Kepler may find true earth analogs.
SETH SHOSTAK: Kepler-22b is about 600 light-years away from Earth, so that's a long way.
But it is, in fact, in an orbit that means that the daytime temperatures on that planet might be comparable to a summer in San Francisco, so that's the first time we found a planet that might have liquid oceans, maybe a thick atmosphere, maybe even life.
DAVID MORRISON, PH.
D.
: What we'd ultimately like to do, first, is just understand how other planetary systems are made up.
But then, we really would like to find Earth-like planets.
Planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars.
NARRATOR: But is it possible that NASA scientists have been searching for life they already know exists? Some believe previous voyages into space have uncovered evidence of an extraterrestrial presence.
Houston, Discovery, how do you read? Over.
Discovery, Houston, read you loud and clear.
Go for main engines start.
Main engines up and burning.
Three, two, one, zero and liftoff! Roger.
Roll, Discovery.
NARRATOR: On September 12, Discovery STS-48 flew nearly 350 miles above the surface of the Earth.
Its crew, led by Captain John Creighton, performed several missions, including the deployment of an upper atmosphere research satellite.
He is go for free drift.
Okay, we're in free drift.
NARRATOR: But while the astronauts occupied themselves with various tasks, a video camera at the rear cargo bay door captured footage that NASA claims no longer exists.
But a number of amateurs who were directly monitoring the transmissions have produced what they allege is genuine footage from STS-48.
The video shows what appears to be a series of unidentified glowing objects and flashing lights that change direction and accelerate rapidly.
CHILDRESS: Apparently, the space shuttle was surrounded by some kind of UFO, flying saucer type of craft, some kind of a shield, at one point, was supposedly put around the shuttle briefly, and then, the UFO and everything disappeared.
BARA: One of the astronauts openly states over an open channel, "Hey, we're being tracked by an alien spacecraft.
" (rhythmic beeping) Then all of a sudden, all the transmission just ceases.
And I think what happened was, is that he must have realized he was on the public channel, not the private channel, and he probably very, very quickly switched over to the private channel to describe what it was he was seeing.
MUSGRAVE: I knew everyone, and I heard stories from everyone.
Nobody brought me any evidence.
So, one side of the coin it's everywhere out there.
Has it been here? I have no evidence.
NARRATOR: NASA officials claim the video images show ice particles glinting in the sun.
But is it possible that video transmissions from the space shuttle captured more than what NASA officials want to admit? SHOSTAK: Occasionally, astronauts, shuttle astronauts, will report that they've seen things or experienced things in space that they can't explain and that might be due to an alien presence.
GIORGIO A.
TSOUKALOS: Ever since humankind launched itself into space, there have been reports where astronauts describe something that they saw while being up in the spaceship.
And we have to remind ourselves that those stories were reported by astronauts, and not by some kind of crazy people.
NARRATOR: In 1996, video captured aboard the space shuttle Columbia STS-80 reportedly shows a number of fast-moving objects just outside the craft.
These unidentified objects appear as bright streaks.
Analysis of their speeds and directions have prompted some researchers to dismiss the claims that the objects were shuttle debris or meteors.
BARA: There's space shuttle video of two very specific missions STS-48 and STS-80 which clearly show what appear to be powered vehicles operating in low earth orbit, defying all the laws of physics and clearly performing the way UFOs or extraterrestrial spacecraft are supposedly able to perform.
NARRATOR: But American astronauts are not the only space travelers reporting otherworldly encounters.
In 1985, Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7 reported seeing seven celestial beings orbiting Earth.
CHILDRESS: Six cosmonauts claimed that, as they looked out of the window of the space station, they saw what they described as winged angels surrounding their ship, and that these were luminous beings looking like people but also having bizarrely wings on them, and they're in space.
So you have to wonder, what's going on here, and were these angels some kind of extraterrestrials in special space suits or with fields around them, and they were investigating the Soviet space station? And then suddenly, bang, they just vanished.
NARRATOR: If reports from trained scientists are true, is this proof that extraterrestrial intelligence has been trying to contact us? SEAN DAVID MORTON: Gordon Cooper approached the United Nations about them actually setting up a bureau at the United Nations for extraterrestrial contact.
EDGAR MITCHELL: This is not unknown knowledge.
There are people that know and there seems to be perhaps several different species of aliens visiting here, and it looks like, likely, they have been for a long, long time.
NARRATOR: Might NASA really be withholding classified information regarding the existence of extraterrestrial beings? Perhaps the answer can be found by taking a look at NASA's curious origins.
NARRATOR: July 29, 1958.
Responding to the successful launch of the Soviet space satellite Sputnik, President Dwight Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, officially establishing NASA.
MORRISON: NASA was formed in existing government agency called NACA that just dealt with aeronautics and then with the early space program that was being developed by the army and the air force.
MITCHELL: NASA was established to take the United States into space and to be a contender in the new direction that humanity was moving of exploring space and out into our solar system.
NARRATOR: The president and congress established NASA as part of the Department of Defense.
The official reason was to prevent the Soviets from stealing U.
S.
technology, but some believe the real motive for this classification was not to hide information from the Soviets but to keep it secret from the American public.
BARA: A lot of people have the idea that NASA is a civilian science agency, and it's not.
It says right there in the act of Congress that created it, anything that they discover is subject to classification and being kept secret and being kept from the American people.
The Brookings Report, which was commissioned by NASA right after NASA itself was created, essentially was commissioned for the purpose of deciding what NASA should do if in fact they made some sort of extraterrestrial contact if they either found artifacts on the Moon or on Mars or if they had direct contact with a superior intelligence, what they should do, and the Brookings Report says very specifically, number one, don't tell anybody.
If you tell anybody, it will shatter the fabric of our civilization.
It will destroy us.
NARRATOR: Some researchers believe the evidence of NASA's hidden agenda can be found in the close ties between its founding scientists and secret societies.
BARA: These secret societies had at their core essentially a belief that they were directly descended from these great gods of ancient Egypt, Isis, Osiris, and Horus, and they considered these gods to be truly the source of their bloodline but also that these gods themselves came from space.
At the very top, you had the Freemasons.
You had James Webb, who was a director of NASA.
You had a man named Kenneth Kleinknecht, who was the head of the Mercury Program, the Apollo Program, the Gemini Program.
He was a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason.
Below them, you had the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, or followers of Aleister Crowley.
People like Jack Parsons down at JPL were all put together, and so they all ended up under the very same roof with the very same agenda and the very same belief system.
HAWKES: We see this practice of passing knowledge down through a secret society go back all the way to the days of the Illuminati who believed that a select few of the elite were smart enough, were capable of handling this secret knowledge but not the population at large.
So the question remains, has this knowledge been passed down through secret societies for generations? And this may predate the secret societies that we know about in modern times all the way back to the days of the pharaohs.
NARRATOR: Like the ancient Egyptians, could NASA's founding fathers have shared the belief that humans descended from extraterrestrial beings? What did the members of these secret societies know about space travel? And how did the ancient past influence their work? Those who suspect these NASA officials operated a hidden agenda point to the repeated use of the number 33 an extremely important symbolic figure in secret societies.
BARA: If you look at the very first landing strip at Cape Canaveral, where we would be landing aircraft and eventually bringing the space shuttle back, it was runway 33.
If you look at the launchpad at White Sands, New Mexico, the only launchpad is launchpad number 33.
So it seems to permeate throughout NASA, this number over and over again, and the fact that it's connected to Freemasonry makes you kind of wonder if maybe there was some other deeper symbolism working.
Houston.
You are a go for landing.
Over.
NARRATOR: Researchers believe the connection to ancient Egyptian beliefs can also be found in the emblem of NASA's Apollo Space Program.
They claim that the large "A" in the star field stands not for the Greek god Apollo but for Asar the Egyptian god more commonly known as Osiris.
This is indicated by the cluster of three stars in the center of the "A," which represent the stars of Orion's Belt.
CHILDRESS: You have to wonder if stars like Orion and Sirius are very important to NASA, because this is where the ancient traditions, including Egyptian, have said that the space gods came from, this is our origins.
NARRATOR: Similarly, researchers point out that the symbol on the Mercury Mission patches is nearly identical to a major icon of ancient Egypt.
BARA: If you look at the mission patches, the symbol for Mercury is really similar to the Egyptian ankh, and it's kind of ironic that you have this sort of Egyptian symbolism in what's supposed to be a representation of Mercury the Messenger.
It's supposed to be a Greek mythology rather than an Egyptian mythology.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that, like ancient alien theorists, NASA scientists believe extraterrestrials visited Earth in the distant past? Perhaps further evidence can be found in the inventions of the unlikely mastermind behind NASA's space program former Nazi SS officer Wernher Von Braun.
NARRATOR: London, England.
September 8, 1944.
(missile whistling through air) (explosion) A 13-ton ballistic missile explodes on impact killing three and wounding 17.
The Vengeance Weapon 2, more commonly known as the V-2 rocket, had been fired from deep within Nazi Germany.
The liquid-propellant weapon proved to be the world's first long-range computer-guided missile, and the first man-made object to enter outer space.
This incredible technology was the brainchild of a man who would eventually become the face of NASA, a 32-year-old engineering genius named Wernher Von Braun.
HENRY STEVENS: Dr.
Von Braun was acknowledged by everyone as the greatest scientific mind in Germany.
He found a way to steer a rocket at 4,000 miles an hour.
He put a combustion chamber that was cooled by the liquid fuel itself, and redesigned the fuel chamber, and he put a guidance system on it.
He was an expert at every facet of rocketry, which is really unheard of.
NARRATOR: Von Braun's passion for rocketry began at an early age.
As a youth, he read science fiction novels by H.
G.
Wells and Jules Verne, and was exposed to mythical stories of the Norse god Tyr, a sky god that ruled over Mars and provided knowledge and technology to humans.
COPPENS: Wernher Von Braun, from childhood, was absolutely convinced that we had to go "out there.
" It possessed him.
And so he was absolutely convinced that mankind had a mission, and also that he had a role to perform.
He feels absolutely confident that he will be able to go to Mars, find evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization there, and from then onwards, will actually go further into space to do this.
MUSGRAVE: Von Braun wanted to go into space.
He wanted to go to the stars.
But then, of course, he got so good at rocketry, the Germans wanted him dropping V-2's on London.
He was very good at that.
NARRATOR: During World War II Von Braun worked as the technical director at Germany's Peenemunde Research Center, where he built rockets not for space travel but as weapons of war.
His brilliance as a rocket scientist earned him a spot in the SS, among Hitler's most trusted scientists and officers.
BARA: Hitler's SS was nothing more than a secret society.
What the SS believed was that the Aryan himself was this direct, pure bloodline that came from Isis and Osiris and Horus and Seth.
Von Braun learned about the myths of the superiority of the Aryan race and their rightful place in the stars and where they had come from.
So it makes complete sense that Von Braun would become fascinated with space.
The mission became to get back up to the stars, to rejoin the gods, to show them that we could do as they had done and travel to the stars, travel to the planets, and basically go back and reclaim our proper place in the universe.
NARRATOR: Although the V-2 rocket was far more advanced than any other fired during World War II, it was not enough to prevent Germany's defeat.
Six weeks after the last V-2 fell on England, Von Braun surrendered to the advancing American forces.
VON BRAUN: I myself, and everybody you see here, have decided to go west.
NARRATOR: Von Braun and his team of scientists were brought to the United States under a controversial classified program known as Operation Paperclip.
(camera shutter clicks) JIM MARRS: After the war, we decided that we were gonna be adversaries with the Soviet Union and that we needed to have the technological jump on them, so we brought these Nazi scientists over, whitewashed their Nazi background and rolled them into our military industrial complex.
NARRATOR: While continuing his work designing military missiles, Von Braun published a series of books and magazine articles that described his concepts for a lunar landing a manned mission to Mars and even an orbiting space station.
VON BRAUN: The entire wheel will slowly rotate at three revolutions per minute.
The resulting centrifugal force will produce an artificial gravity for the men in the rim.
Notice that the floors are placed so that the men stand with their heads towards the hub.
NARRATOR: But why was Von Braun so intent on traveling into space? MORTON: Wernher Von Braun was very much the public scientific face of the American space program.
He was obsessed, by the way, with not just going to the Moon but also going beyond that and eventually building colonies on Mars.
SHOSTAK: The deal was to build a rocket that didn't just go up a couple of hundred miles, but a rocket that could make it a quarter of a million miles, all the way to the Moon.
VON BRAUN: If we were to start today on an organized and well-supported space program, I believe a practical passenger rocket could be built and tested within ten years.
MUSGRAVE: Von Braun went to work on a Jupiter-C, which was an upgraded V-2.
But what is unbelievable is, he went from an upgraded V-2 to a Saturn F-1, which is even today, powerful and the most reliable and the best rocket engine that's ever existed, even though he did that 45 years ago.
NARRATOR: On May 5, 1961, less than three years after joining NASA, Von Braun stood watch as one of his rockets rockets carried Alan Shepard up into space.
President Kennedy announced his goal to send a man to the Moon.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
NARRATOR: But then, according to the National Security Action Memorandum number 271, JFK followed up his dramatic announcement by secretly proposing to merge NASA's space program with that of the Soviets.
But why, when it appeared that Americans were finally moving ahead in the race for space, would JFK offer to share technologies with America's rival? HAWKES: According to conspiracy theorists, it's because something was discovered along the way, and that discovery was alien visitation did exist, and they already knew about it.
The race for the Moon, was it a race between two nations, or was it a race by two nations to reach technology on the Moon that was left behind by an extraterrestrial race? NARRATOR: Is it possible Von Braun's rockets had drawn the attention of otherworldly beings, as some ancient astronaut theorists believe? What did NASA's scientists expect to find on the Moon? And might they also have been looking for evidence of life on Mars? NARRATOR: The Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Three, two, one.
Engines start.
NARRATOR: On November 26, 2011, scientists with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched their The Mars Science Laboratory is expected to enter the Martian atmosphere in August 2012.
After deploying its parachute and landing on the surface, an automobile-sized remote controlled rover named Curiosity will probe the Red Planet's past and present ability to sustain microbial life.
SHOSTAK: It's going to be able to roam around the surface of Mars.
It's pretty fast compared to our old rovers.
It can go the length of a football field in an hour.
But it can also analyze the surface of Mars and it's trying to find out, look, was there ever liquid water here, lakes, oceans, that kind of thing? What about the chemical composition of the soil? Is it the kind of thing that indicates that Mars was once a kinder, gentler world? It's not looking directly for life.
We still don't do that.
MORRISON: We have evidence that, although Mars is very cold now, has a very thin atmosphere, it once had a thick atmosphere, blue sky, clouds, rain, liquid water the ingredients we think would be possible for life.
So it's quite reasonable to imagine that life formed there long ago.
The question is: could the life have survived as the planet got colder? Could it have gone below the surface, for instance? We think so.
NARRATOR: If Wernher Von Braun's visions of space travel could become reality and land a man on the Moon, could his concept of human travel to Mars become a fact as well? And might NASA still be secretly developing his ideas plans first drawn up nearly 60 years ago? BARA: If you look at the research that was being done in field dynamics and very, very exotic physics back in the 1950s and even into the early 1960s, it's pretty clear that we were on a very exciting path towards very, very powerful breakthrough propulsion systems that would essentially allow us to create flying saucers that could travel very easily and very short amounts of time between the Earth and the Moon and between the Earth and Mars, so it makes complete sense that we do have this secret private program that maybe even a lot of the guys inside NASA themselves don't know about.
ROBERT H.
FRISBEE: In the more near term, NASA and other space agencies talk about moving out into the solar system, and there we're looking at using a variety of extraterrestrial materials to produce propellants for rockets, oxygen for life support, even building materials.
CHILDRESS: Many researchers believe that the overt NASA missions are really a cover for what they call a secret space program and that the secret space program is using different technology than rockets, more of an alien-type technology, some kind of antigravity type of craft, and that those craft, rather than rockets, could be going to bases on the Moon that would be secret bases, also manned by the American government or the secret space program, and that from those bases on the Moon, we could even be journeying in these retro engineered spacecraft to Mars.
NARRATOR: According to scientists, the possibility of transforming Mars into an Earth like planet is theoretically possible.
MUSGRAVE: I think Mars is terraformable.
Terraforming means to take life to a place that has no life and start growing the life there.
I think Mars is unbelievably terraformable.
MORRISON: I can't imagine we'll ever reach a destination that answers all our questions, but as an astrobiologist, I think in the next 25 or 30 years, we have a very good chance of finding evidence of life beyond Earth.
There's a real prospect we'll be able to answer that fundamental question: are we alone? NARRATOR: Most NASA scientists agree that future exploration of space will uncover life on other planets.
But could it also reveal proof that the gods of the ancient world were, in fact, extraterrestrials, as ancient astronaut theorists believe? BARA: NASA'S real core mission in the beginning was essentially to go to the Moon, retrieve evidence of the fact that there was a prior advanced civilization in the solar system, and bring it back.
In other words, prove that, in fact, we are descended from these gods Isis, Osiris, Horus, and Seth.
Now that that goal has been accomplished, NASA's purpose seems to be to be part of this very, very slow revelation of information.
TSOUKALOS: NASA asks the question of human origins.
Where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going? They're dealing with space.
And according to the ancient alien theory our origins are not here on Earth but up there.
Space truly is the final frontier.
NARRATOR: If ancient knowledge guided us to the Moon, what might the ancient past reveal about our future here on Earth? And with NASA's continuing explorations of space, might we finally find proof of alien beings? Or proof of our own alien origins?