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Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep Dive, the place where we take

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the most tantalizing mysteries and science, history and space, and

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we get straight to the facts beneath the folklore. And

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today we are going way out there. We are we're

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soaring way beyond the Red planet, landing on its well.

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It's terrifying, doomed and incredibly strange moon photos.

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Speaker 2: And we are wrestling with a question that has captivated

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everyone from astrophysicists to late night Internet theorists. Did someone

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put that giant structure there?

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Speaker 1: That's the hook that gets everyone, isn't it. You have

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these three elements that just sound like pure science fiction,

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but they all absolutely real. Right. First, you have this gigantic,

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strangely rectangular structure, a monolith, just sitting there on an

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alien moon.

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Speaker 2: Then you have an icon an Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin,

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basically posing the ultimate question about its origin.

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Speaker 1: And third, the really chilling part is the story of

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the Soviet probe Phobos two, which just vanished. It went

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silent right after snapping a final really anomalous image that

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some people claim shows that hostile entity took it out.

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Speaker 2: So our mission today is to cut through all of

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that noise. I mean, the Internet is just a wash

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with these sensationalist posts and theories that weave all three

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of these things into one grand narrative of alien architects

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and interstellar conflict, right, a cover up exactly. So we're

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here to look at the primary source material, the planetary geology,

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the engineering forensics from the probe, and the actual context

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of that buzz Aldrin quote and really separate the objective

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facts from the let's call it the narrative fiction.

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Speaker 1: And the question is just so irresistible because it comes

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from such a legitimate place. Buzz Aldrin in that famous

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two thousand and nine c Span appearance, was talking about

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the monolith when he asked, and this is the quote

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that launched one thousand YouTube videos. When people find out

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about that, they're going to say, who put that there?

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Who put that there?

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Speaker 2: And that just grabs you, and it instantly captures the

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public's imagination.

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Speaker 1: It absolutely does. But to understand why this object looks

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so alien and why any mission failure there just seems

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so dramatic, we have to start by grounding ourselves in

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the reality of Phobos itself.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this isn't just any moon. It's arguably the most

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structurally compromised and dynamically volatile natural satellite in the entire

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Solar System. It's a weird, weird place.

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Speaker 1: And the name is so appropriate. Phobos, along with its

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little companion Demos, they're the Greek personifications of fear and panic.

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Speaker 2: And for a good reason. They were discovered by the

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astronomer Assop Hall back in eighteen seventy seven, and he

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almost gave up the search. I mean, they're so tiny

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and so close to the glare of Mars, they're incredibly

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hard to.

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Speaker 1: Spot, and that tiny size is deceptive. Phobos is so

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irregularly shaped people call it a little potato shaped object,

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which is pretty accurate.

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Speaker 2: It measures only about twenty seven kilometers across at its

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whitest point, and then it shrinks down to maybe eighteen

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kilometers at its narrowest. It's really truly diminutive.

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Speaker 1: But that tiny size is coupled with a truly insane orbit.

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It's the closest moon to its parent planet of any

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that we know of in the Solar System, that's right.

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Speaker 2: And it whips around Mars faster than Mars even rotates

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on its own axis.

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Speaker 1: That's mind bending.

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Speaker 2: It completes an entire orbit in just seven hours and

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thirty nine minutes. Now, think about what that means. If

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you were standing on the surface of Mars, Phobos would

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appear to rise in the west, west, the west, and

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then it was set in the east, and it does

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this twice every single Martian day. It would be this bizarre,

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fast moving object in the sky.

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Speaker 1: It's a total orbital roller coaster, which creates these extreme

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tidal forces. And that brings us to the crucial piece

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of information, the thing that really sets the stage for

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its structure and its imminent demise. Phobos is in a.

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Speaker 2: Death spiral precisely. This is all down to orbital mechanics,

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something called tidal decceleration. The gravitational pug of war between

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Phobos and Mars is constantly stealing energy from Phebos's orbit,

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so it's getting closer. It's getting closer, and this gradually

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shrinks its orbital radius. The rate of descent is relentless.

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It's falling toward Mars by about two meters. That's roughly

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six and a half feet every hundred years.

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Speaker 1: Two meters every century doesn't sound like much, but when

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you're talking geological time scales, that's a catastrophic spiral.

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Speaker 2: It is, and the consequence is totally inevitable. Planetary scientists

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estimate that the relentless pull of Martian gravity is going

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to tear Phobos apart in about thirty to fifty million years.

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Speaker 1: Which in cosmic terms is tomorrow.

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Speaker 2: It's nothing, and the fragments won't just vanish. They're going

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to form a temporary but probably spectacular planetary ring system

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around Mars.

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Speaker 1: So we are talking about a moon that is under constant,

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extreme stress. It's already suffering from an existential crisis. This

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impending destruction and the tidal stress it's under right now

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has to be central to understanding its weird interior structure

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and all those strange features on its surface.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's the key to everything.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack the actual makeup of this moon, because

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the geology tells a story that really really pushes back

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against the idea that it's some solid, artificial structure. The

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data suggests it's way more fragile than that.

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Speaker 2: It's pretty much the opposite of solid. The first clue

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you get to its weird structure is just its appearance.

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Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the

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Solar System. It has an extremely low albedo of about

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point zero seven to.

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Speaker 1: One, so it's dark like charcoal dark exactly.

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Speaker 2: It makes it look like these blackish carbonaceous C type

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asteroids which are really rich in organic compounds and other

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volable materials.

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Speaker 1: And that dark, primitive look is what led to the

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first big scientific hypothesis, right, that Phobos was just a

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captured asteroid that wandered too close to Mars and got

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snagged by its gravity.

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Speaker 2: That was hypothesis one, and it seemed logical, you know,

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based on the composition. But then as we got more

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data from missions like Viking and later Mars Express, we

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were able to calculate its mean density, and that's the

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key metric.

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Speaker 1: What was the number.

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Speaker 2: The density came out to be around one point eight

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eight seven grams per cubic centimetor.

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Speaker 1: And why is that number a huge problem for the

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captured asteroid.

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Speaker 2: Theory because if Phobos were a solid chunk of that

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dark C type asteroid rock, you expect a density much

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closer to three grams per cubiccentimator.

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Speaker 1: Oh, so it's way too light.

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Speaker 2: Way too late. The reality is Phobos is unusually fluffy

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for lack of a better word. This low density points

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to one shocking conclusion, significant internal porosity.

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Speaker 1: So if I'm understanding this, you take the mass of Phobos,

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you divide it by its volume, and the numbers only

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work out if a huge percentage of the inside is

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just empty space.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, the porosity is estimated to be thirty percent, give

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or take five percent, thirty percent of it is just

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void's empty space. Wow. This strongly supports the idea that

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Phobos isn't a single solid object. It's a loosely aggregated

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body what planetary geologists call a rubble pile. A rubble pile, Yeah,

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it's held together by its own very very weak gravity

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and maybe a thin, brittle outer crust. It's like a

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giant cosmic gravel bag. And this extreme fragility is vital

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when you start thinking about out how a massive boulder

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like the monolith could even stand upon its surface.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so the high perosity, the rubble pile conclusion, that

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makes the captured asteroid theory a lot less likely.

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Speaker 2: It does it forced the scientists to lean much more

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heavily toward hypothesis too.

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Speaker 1: Martian ejecta right, tell us about that.

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Speaker 2: Well, if it were a captured asteroid, its orbit would

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probably be more inclined, more elliptical. Instead, Phobos and Demos

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have these extremely circular orbits that lie almost exactly over

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Mars's equator.

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Speaker 1: Which is not what you'd expect from something just randomly captured,

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not at all.

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Speaker 2: The low density, the high porosity, and that very specific

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equatorial orbit. They all strongly suggest that Phobos formed after Mars.

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It likely coalesced from a ring of material Martian ejecta

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that was blasted into orbit by a giant impact on

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Mars itself long ago.

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Speaker 1: So Phobos could actually be made of bits of Mars's

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ancient crust and mantle, all just clumped.

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Speaker 2: Back together essentially. Yes, it's the same mechanism we believe

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formed our own moon, just on a much smaller and

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much more structural unsound scale.

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Speaker 1: And the mystery keeps going because we are still trying

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to figure out what's inside this rubble pile. I want

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to talk about the new data from the European Space

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Agency's Mars Express mission.

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Speaker 2: Yes, this is where the deep dies gets really technical

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and cool. Mars Express has an instrument called Marsus that's

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the mars Advanced radar for subsurface and ionosphere sounding.

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Speaker 1: A ground penetrating radar for a moon basically.

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Speaker 2: Now, radar is notoriously difficult to use on small, fast moving,

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non spherical bodies. It's a nightmare. But Issa recently updated

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Marcus's software to let it function much closer to Phobos.

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Speaker 1: Sow does radar tell us what's inside? It's just bouncing signals.

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Speaker 2: Right, it is, But marsis sends very low frequency radio

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waves down into the moon. The moon or solid rock,

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the waves would penetrate and reflect cleanly from different layers

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or a denser core, But on a rubble pile on Phobos.

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They're looking at how the signals scatter and attenuate, how

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they fade. The speed and intensity of the reflections are

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directly related to the density distribution of the material inside.

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Speaker 1: And what did the radar hints review?

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Speaker 2: They found hints of unknown structures below the regolith. Now,

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let's be very clear, this is not a map of

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hallways and support.

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Speaker 1: Beams, right, not alien construction.

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Speaker 2: No, it's likely detecting voids or internal density variations, pockets

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where the rubble is more loosely packed, or maybe even

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a slightly more cohesive, water rich inner core. It just

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reaffirms that the internal structure is a total mess. It's heterogeneous,

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and it keeps the origin debate captured or coalesced very

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much alive.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's move to the surface, because this internal

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frigility is what created the monolith's origin story in the

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first place. Phobos is completely dominated by one gigantic scar,

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Stickney Crater.

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Speaker 2: Stickney Crater is a terrifying feature. It's nine point seven

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kilometers wide. Now, given the Moon's overall tiny dimensions, the

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impact that created it was so violent that dynamic models

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show it must have come within a hair's breadth of

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completely shattering the entire Moon.

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Speaker 1: Like the death star on Mimus.

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Speaker 2: Exactly like that. It's what scientists call a stressed body.

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It's been through trauma.

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Speaker 1: And radiating out from Stickney are those bizarre, extensive networks

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of grooves and streaks. Some of them are up to

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twenty kilometers long. They almost look artificial.

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Speaker 2: They look incredibly unnatural, like uniform tire tracks or something.

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For decades, those grooves also fueled the idea of artificial engineering.

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The early theories were that they were deep fissures, stress fractures,

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from the Stickney impact propagating through the whole rubble pile.

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Speaker 1: But we have better explanations now, right we do.

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Speaker 2: Modern computational modeling has given us two much more robust

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and less dramatic explanations.

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Speaker 1: What's the leading theory for those parallel grooves now?

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Speaker 2: The current favorite, which is strongly supported by a twenty

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eighteen computational analysis, links the grooves directly to secondary ejecta. Basically,

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the impact that created Stickney was so massive it launched

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giant chunks of rock, huge boulders, out into microgravity orbit.

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These chunks then fell back down out.

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Speaker 1: Of the surface, so the grooves are not fractures, they're literally.

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Speaker 2: Scratch marks exactly. When these massive boulders launched from Stickney

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land back on the surface of a rubble pile in microgravity,

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they don't just stop. They don't crater. They skip and

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they roll and they bounce across the surface in a

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predictable pattern, following the path of least resistance.

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Speaker 1: So they're carving out these long parallel tracks they are.

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Speaker 2: This movement creates the long, parallel, predictable groove patterns we see.

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It's a much more elegant explanation.

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Speaker 1: It means the grooves are basically a fossil record of

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the biggest, most violent event in Phobos's history.

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Speaker 2: And that leads us directly to the monolith, because the

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monolith is simply the largest, most spectacular piece of that

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ejective that didn't roll. It just landed and stuck.

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Speaker 1: Okay, now we're at the Star attraction the Phobos monolith itself,

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and let's be crystal clear for everyone listening. This is

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a real catalog structure. It is not an optical illusion.

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It is not a conspiracy theory fan.

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Speaker 2: It is absolutely real. It's a recognized feature on the

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surface of Phobos. It was first observed in imagery captured

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by the Mars Global Surveyor or MGS, using its high

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res camera way back in nineteen ninety.

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Speaker 1: Eight, and an imaging contractor named Lan Fleming later confirmed it.

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Speaker 2: Right, that's right, he confirmed it after a public survey

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of the data first pointed it out.

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Speaker 1: So it's been known for a long time, and the

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scale is just difficult to wrap your head around. When

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you hear monolith, you think of something smaller, but this

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is described as building sized. Give us the exact dimensions based.

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Speaker 2: On geometric analysis of its shadow, which is how you

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determine height on airless bodies. The structure is estimated to

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be approximately eighty five meters across and standing roughly ninety

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meters tall.

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Speaker 1: Ninety meters tall.

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Speaker 2: It's monumental. If you stood it on Earth, it would

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be taller than the Statue of Liberty, not counting her pedestal.

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Speaker 1: And its location is the second piece of this whole

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geological puzzle.

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Speaker 2: It sits prominently near the rim of that colossal Stickney crater,

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and this proximity is the single most compelling piece of evidence. Again,

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it's an artificial origin. Planetary geologists are confident the monolith

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is a piece of dense, coherent core fragment that was

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violently ejected from the Stickney impact and just happen to

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land exactly where it sits now.

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Speaker 1: But the human fascination, the reason we call it a

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monolith is because it looks so rectangular, almost purposefully shaped.

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How does a violent injection create something that looks so structured.

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Speaker 2: You're hitting on two really critical points there, geometry and physics. First,

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the rectangularity is often exaggerated. It's due to low image

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resolution and.

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Speaker 1: Our brains trying to make sense of it exactly.

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Speaker 2: Our human tendency toward peridolia. Seeing familiar shapes like faces

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or in this case, geometric structures does all the rest.

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We fill in the blur with something familiar, like the

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monolith from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey.

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Speaker 1: And what about the physics? How can a ninety meter

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rock stand upright after being blasted out of a crater

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without shattering?

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Speaker 2: That's the second point, and it's unique to these tiny

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micro gravity environments like Phobos. If exactly a large internally

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coherent block of rock, maybe a denser chunk from the

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Moon's original core, can be ejected and just land at

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an odd upright angle. Because the Moon's gravity is so weak,

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there's not enough force to make it topple over or

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sink or shatter. It just rests vertically on one of

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its fractured.

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Speaker 1: Faces, giving it that standing stone look.

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Speaker 2: That's it. NASA officially classifies it as a prominent boulder

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in its photojournal.

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Speaker 1: So Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut, he saw this amazing natural

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geological curiosity, and he seized on the public's interpretation of

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it to make a point. Let's address that misquote directly,

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because this is where the popular narrative gets it completely

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and totally wrong.

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Speaker 2: This is a classic classic case of selective editing. Aldron

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was not confessing to an alien artifact. He was campaigning

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for a human mission to Phobos. This was all during

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his promotion of the Prime Mission concept, which imagined using

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Phobos as a staging area for future Mars landing.

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Speaker 1: So tell us about the full crucial context of this

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two thousand and nine C Span appearance.

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Speaker 2: His goal was to generate enthusiasm for bold exploration. He

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started by saying, we should go boldly where man is

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not gone before, fly to comets, visit asteroids, visit the

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moon of Mars. And then he uses the monolith as

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the ultimate piece of PR.

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Speaker 1: And this is the part that all the conspiracy videos

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play in a loop. There's a monolith there, a very

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unusual structure on this little potato shaped object that goes

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around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out

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about that, they're going to say, who put that there?

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Who put that there?

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Speaker 2: That's the rhetorical device. It's de bait. He intentionally raises

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the mystery to grab the listener's attention, which is just

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smart political maneuvering for a PR mission But the.

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Speaker 1: Very next thing he says, which is almost always cut

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from the online clips, is the answer.

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Speaker 2: It is the very next breath he says, Well, the

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universe put it there. If you choose God put.

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Speaker 1: It there, that's a complete narrative reversal.

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Speaker 2: It is. He didn't endorse the alien architecture theory at all.

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He was using the sensationalism of a nap virtual curiosity

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to advocate for his scientific human mission to go investigate it.

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Speaker 1: Because amission to Phobos is seen as much easier, a

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better stepping stone than landing directly on Mars itself.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, the monolith is sensational, but his actual conclusion confirms

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he views it as a geological feature. The media sensationalism

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just chose to clip the inconvenient scientific conclusion off the

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end of the sound bite, letting the question hang there

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all tantalizingly in the air.

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Speaker 1: The truth is just less dramatic, but way more interesting.

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It's a natural building sized piece of a moon that

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is literally falling apart.

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Speaker 2: A powerful lesson in how a narrative can survive just

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by truncation.

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Speaker 1: Well, speaking of things that captured the imagination and then

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ended abruptly, let's pivot to the second great Phobos mystery,

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this one rooted in Cold War technology, the Phobos two incident.

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Speaker 2: So this takes us from the geology of a Rubbel

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pile to the unforgiving reality of deep space engineering in

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the nineteen eighties. The sudden, unresolved loss of the Soviet

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probe Phobos two in March nineteen eighty nine is what

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fueled the most dramatic and enduring conspiracy narratives about this moon, and.

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Speaker 1: The whole program was already reeling at that point. The

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mission had a twin probe, Phobos one, that failed even earlier.

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Speaker 2: Didn't it it did? Phobos IE failed spectacularly in September

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nineteen eighty eight, just two months after it launched, due

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entirely to human error. A technician sent a series of

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commands to the probe, and one critical command, a simple

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typo a single wrong character, deactivated the attitude control thrusters.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Because the thrusters were off, the probe started to tumble,

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it lost its lock on the Sun, the solar panels

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couldn't get power, and it was dead before it ever

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even reached Mars. A catastrophic failure from a single keystroke

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so that sets.

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Speaker 1: The stage for Phobos two carrying the entire weight of

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the Soviet space program on its shoulders, and his goal

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was incredibly ambitious, especially for nineteen eighty nine technology.

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Speaker 2: The plan was audacious. Phobos two was supposed to approach

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within just fifty meters of the Moon's surface fifty fifty

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meters and then released two small landers, a mobile hopper

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and a stationary platform to study the surface composition in

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internal structure up close.

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Speaker 1: But on March twenty seventh, nineteen eighty nine, just before

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it was supposed to make that final approach maneuver, communication

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was lost abruptly, and that's when the sensational claim.

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Speaker 2: To cold Right. The narrative became that the probe went

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silent right after transmitting an image that allegedly showed a

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large cylindrical object or a giant shadow, implying some external

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hostile entity disabled it.

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Speaker 1: That story became gospel in certain circles for decades.

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Speaker 2: It did, But after the Cold War, technical reports were

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finally made public and they provide this detailed, almost painful

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forensic accounting of the internal engineering failures. The WHOLSAGI is

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one of process or errors and just fundamentally inadequate software architecture,

381
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not alien intervention.

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Speaker 1: Let's break down the technical causes, because this is where

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a deep dive into the engineering really pays off. What

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was the actual state of the space creft when it

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got to Mars?

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Speaker 2: It was deeply compromised from the start. The Phobos two

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probe arrived at Mars with significant systemic issues, and crucially,

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two of its three primary onboard computers were already malfunctioning.

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Two out of three YEP one was completely dead and

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the second one was intermittent at best. The spacecraft was

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already operating on a nice edge.

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Speaker 1: Why is two out of three failing so disastrous? Why

393
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couldn't the one healthy computer just take over the mission?

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Speaker 2: Because the spacecraft used a specific design called a voting architecture.

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This is a system that's actually meant to prevent a

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single faulty component from messing up the mission. It requires

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at least two of the three computers to agree on

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a decision. They literally vote, in order to control the

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craft's critical functions like attitude adjustments or course corrections.

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Speaker 1: Ah So, with two computers already on the fritz, the

401
00:19:50,279 --> 00:19:53,559
voting architecture actually worked against it. The one healthy computer

402
00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:56,759
couldn't outvote the silent or failing ones exactly.

403
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Speaker 2: The system lacked the necessary functional redundant. Instead of being

404
00:20:01,519 --> 00:20:04,319
a safe mode solution, the voting logic itself became the

405
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point of failure. The system couldn't trust the healthy computer

406
00:20:07,920 --> 00:20:11,039
because it was being outvoted by its own internal system collapse.

407
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Speaker 1: So what was the terminal event? What actually killed the mission?

408
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Speaker 2: The official investigations concluded the most probable scenario was a

409
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processor air that led to an irreversible loss of attitude control.

410
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The control system just couldn't figure out which way the

411
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spacecraft was facing anymore, and Phobos two began to tumble

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uncontrollably through space.

413
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Speaker 1: And once a deep space probe starts tumbling, that's usually

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a fatal cascade failure unless it has a critical piece

415
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of technology, which I'm guessing Phobos two lacked.

416
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Speaker 2: That's the final nail in the coffin yea, the lack

417
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of a proper safe mode architecture. A safe mode is

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a crucial, non negotiable feature in modern spacecraft design. It's

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a self preservation protocol. When the main computer realizes its

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lost control, it automatically shuts down all the non essential systems,

421
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and most critically, reorients the spacecraft solar arrays to point

422
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at the Sun.

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Speaker 1: So without a safe mode, what happened to Phobos two?

424
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Speaker 2: The post mortem was chillingly simple. Because Phobos two was

425
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tumbling uncontrollably, its solar arrays couldn't stay pointed at the Sun.

426
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This led to a rapid and terminal depletion of the

427
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main battery power. The loss of signal came hours later

428
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when the batteries just died. It wasn't a sudden attack.

429
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It was a slow, agonizing death by engineering inadequacy and

430
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a predictable software flaw.

431
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Speaker 1: It's the ultimate anti climax for a great space mystery.

432
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The system just cannibalized itself, but the myth persists because

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of that alleged final image. We have to thoroughly address

434
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the claims about the large cylindrical object and the giant shadow.

435
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Speaker 2: Let's start with the cylindrical object. This goes right back

436
00:21:46,799 --> 00:21:49,880
to the issue of corrupted data. When a tumbling, compromised

437
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spacecraft tries to transmit data, especially using its high speed transmitter,

438
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which Phobos two was already having trouble with, the telemetry

439
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packets get corrupted, they get jumbled, and.

440
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Speaker 1: When you try to reconstruc a visual image from that

441
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corrupted data, what happens?

442
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Speaker 2: You get artifacts, these transmission flaws. They often look like

443
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straight lines or structured geometrical patterns. They're generated by the

444
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error correction software trying to make sense of jumbled, non

445
00:22:14,799 --> 00:22:18,200
contiguous data. To a non specialist looking at a blurry

446
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artifacted reconstruction, these structured digital patterns, sometimes looking like cylinders

447
00:22:23,839 --> 00:22:27,000
or straight lines, can easily be interpreted as a picture

448
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of an.

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Speaker 1: Object, when in reality they're a picture of the system's failure.

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Speaker 2: That's it. The cylinder isn't a picture of an alien ship.

451
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:36,400
It's a visualization of a process or hiccup combined with

452
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a weak, tumbling radio signal. The shape is a result

453
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of the system collapse, not the cause of it.

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Speaker 1: Okay, And what about the giant shadow that some people

455
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claim to have seen in those final frames.

456
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Speaker 2: That one is even more mundane, though it is spectacular

457
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in its own right. The giant shadow is simply the

458
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large elliptical shadow cast by Phobos itself under the surface

459
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of Mars. Phobos is so close to Mars that when

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it passes in front of the Sun from Mars perspective,

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it casts a very large, defined shadow.

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Speaker 1: We see this all the time with our Mars rovers

463
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like opportunity and perseverance, don't.

464
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Speaker 2: We we do. They often capture these amazing images of

465
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the Phobos solar transit, this massive, rapid, irregularly shaped object

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briefly eclipsing the Sun, casting a shadow that just races

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across the Martian surface. If a non specialist sees a

468
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heavily artifacted or compromised image showing that transit shadow, it's

469
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easily misinterpreted as some massive anomalous object hovering nearby.

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Speaker 1: So it's a totally normal atronomical phenomenon being confused with

471
00:23:36,079 --> 00:23:38,200
an extraterrestrial threat exactly.

472
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 2: And you have to remember the context. This was all

473
00:23:40,279 --> 00:23:43,799
shrouded in Cold War drama and a lack of immediate transparency,

474
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:46,079
which just lets these theories.

475
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:49,039
Speaker 1: Fester, right, And we have to emphasize the historical context here.

476
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,480
The systemic failures within the Soviet and later Russian space

477
00:23:52,519 --> 00:23:55,799
programs really validate the Phobos two conclusion. This wasn't a fluke,

478
00:23:56,039 --> 00:23:56,599
not at all.

479
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:59,519
Speaker 2: We mentioned Phobos I failing because of a typo, and

480
00:23:59,599 --> 00:24:02,279
much later the Phobos Grunt mission in twenty eleven, which

481
00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:05,559
was supposed to return samples from Phobos, also failed catastrophically.

482
00:24:05,559 --> 00:24:06,400
Speaker 1: Why did that one fail?

483
00:24:06,559 --> 00:24:10,279
Speaker 2: Technical issues? Again? Specifically, they found it used non space

484
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:13,640
qualified parts and had gone through profoundly inadequate component and

485
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:19,000
system testing. This decade's long pattern of technical weakness, flawed architecture,

486
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:22,880
and component inadequacy just makes the forensic conclusion for FOCOS

487
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,599
too all the more believable. It failed due to internal

488
00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:31,039
system level issues. It died of old space age design flaws.

489
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:34,200
Speaker 1: And there's one final detail that really undercuts the whole

490
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:35,880
cover up narrative, Isn't there.

491
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:40,279
Speaker 2: There is scientific transparency. While the final communication failed, high

492
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:44,039
level scientific data from the Phobos t ISM Infrared Spectrometer

493
00:24:44,279 --> 00:24:48,440
is publicly archived. Researchers today can access the raw telemetry

494
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:51,759
and calibrated data. If there is a true smoking gun

495
00:24:51,799 --> 00:24:54,400
image of an alien vessel, it would have been logistically

496
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:57,079
impossible to purge all traces of it when so much

497
00:24:57,079 --> 00:24:59,440
of the mission's other data is readily available to researchers

498
00:24:59,480 --> 00:24:59,960
all over the world.

499
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:02,880
Speaker 1: Okay, let's synthesize everything we've learned. We started with the

500
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:06,759
three pillars of the Phobos mystery a monolith, a curious astronaut,

501
00:25:06,759 --> 00:25:08,240
and a vanished probe, and.

502
00:25:08,279 --> 00:25:12,319
Speaker 2: We've really reconciled them with objective reality. The monolith is

503
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:16,359
an extreme geological fact, the astronaut's quote was a misquoted

504
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:20,200
public relations statement, and the probs vanishing was a predictable

505
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:21,640
technical post mortem.

506
00:25:22,039 --> 00:25:25,039
Speaker 1: The true Phobos mysteries, it seems, are rooted not in

507
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:28,759
alien construction or conflict, but in the intense physics and

508
00:25:28,799 --> 00:25:32,160
geological violence of a tiny moon that is literally under

509
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:34,240
constant title stress and falling apart.

510
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:38,039
Speaker 2: Let's review, the monolith. While it's enormous at ninety meters tall,

511
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:41,720
is almost certainly a chunk of impact ejecta, a dense,

512
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:45,960
unweathered rock fragment violently blasted out of the massive.

513
00:25:45,599 --> 00:25:48,640
Speaker 1: Stigny crater, and its rectangular appearance is just an effect

514
00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:52,920
of microgravity physics and our own brain seeing patterns are paradolia.

515
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,920
Speaker 2: And buzz Aldrin. The highly respected astronaut was championing a

516
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:59,960
mission to go study this natural curiosity, explicitly stating that

517
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,720
the universe put it there, which directly underlines the very

518
00:26:02,759 --> 00:26:07,200
conspiracy he's often cited as confirming. He used the mystery

519
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:08,640
to sell the science.

520
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:12,680
Speaker 1: And the silence of Phobos too a tragic cascade failure.

521
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:16,720
It stemmed from a malfunctioning computer, a flawed three way

522
00:26:16,799 --> 00:26:20,960
voting architecture, and the terminal lack of a solar oriented safe.

523
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:25,160
Speaker 2: Mode, and the alleged cylindrical object was just digital noise

524
00:26:25,599 --> 00:26:29,880
misinterpreted when the whole system finally collapsed. The available evidence

525
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:33,440
is overwhelmingly consistent with Phobos being a porous rubble pile

526
00:26:33,759 --> 00:26:36,640
with thirty percent empty space inside that is slowly being

527
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:38,559
shredded by Mars's gravity.

528
00:26:38,279 --> 00:26:40,839
Speaker 1: And the monolith is maybe the most visible piece of

529
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:44,640
evidence of this violent geological history, just sitting precariously on

530
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:47,640
the surface exactly. So this brings us to future exploration

531
00:26:47,799 --> 00:26:51,000
because these mysteries, whether they're resolved or not, continue to

532
00:26:51,039 --> 00:26:55,319
drive scientific interest. The monolith itself remains a huge scientific target.

533
00:26:55,759 --> 00:26:59,839
Why is that specific boulder still so valuable to planetary science.

534
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,279
Speaker 2: Because as it is a dense, coherent piece of rock

535
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:06,000
that was blasted from deep below the surface regolith. Unlike

536
00:27:06,039 --> 00:27:08,079
all the dust on the surface which have been constantly

537
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:11,400
battered by solar radiation and micro meteorites for eons, the

538
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:15,680
monolith represents relatively pristine, unweathered subsurface.

539
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:17,519
Speaker 1: Material, so if we could get a sample from it.

540
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:20,880
Speaker 2: Retrieving a sample from it could provide the definitive empirical

541
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:25,319
answer to Phobos's origin debate. Is it made of carbonaceous

542
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,559
asteroid material from the Outer Solar System or is it

543
00:27:28,599 --> 00:27:32,000
made of ancient Martian crust? It would finally tell us.

544
00:27:32,039 --> 00:27:34,759
Speaker 1: That's the ultimate prize, and that's exactly why missions are

545
00:27:34,759 --> 00:27:38,119
being planned around it. The proposed Canadian Prime mission, for example,

546
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,559
was explicitly designed to land right near the monolith to

547
00:27:41,599 --> 00:27:44,359
analyze that exact subsurface ejecta.

548
00:27:44,519 --> 00:27:46,640
Speaker 2: And the mission that is actually moving forward is from

549
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:50,920
the Japanese Airspace Exploration Agency JAXA. It's a Martian Moons

550
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:53,000
Exploration or MMX mission.

551
00:27:53,039 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: When is that supposed to launch.

552
00:27:54,559 --> 00:27:57,599
Speaker 2: It's scheduled to launch around twenty twenty six. MMX aims

553
00:27:57,599 --> 00:28:01,119
to land, collect samples from Phobos regularly and then return

554
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,160
them to Earth by twenty thirty one. This mission is

555
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:06,920
designed to finally end the origin debate once and for all.

556
00:28:07,039 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 1: It is just incredible to think that we are sending

557
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:13,160
this complex, multi billion dollar mission to retrieve samples from

558
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:17,039
a tiny, doomed moon before it literally turns into space dust.

559
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,119
Speaker 2: It creates a powerful mandate, doesn't it. It leaves us

560
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,480
with a final thought to ponder. We know Phobos is

561
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,079
destined to be ripped apart by Mars's gravity in thirty

562
00:28:26,079 --> 00:28:30,079
to fifty million years, forming a temporary planetary ring. So

563
00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:32,519
given the incredible engineering feed it will take to land

564
00:28:32,519 --> 00:28:35,440
on a high porosity ruble pile and then return samples

565
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:39,680
from it. Should humanity prioritize recovering samples from this unique

566
00:28:39,839 --> 00:28:43,720
doomed object, especially from something like the monolith before this

567
00:28:43,759 --> 00:28:47,160
piece of planetary history is irrevocably scattered across the Martian sky.

568
00:28:47,839 --> 00:28:49,839
What is the most important question you think the MMX

569
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:53,000
mission needs to answer about this moon's violent and fascinating

570
00:28:53,039 --> 00:28:53,400
origin