Humans on Mars in 1979 ???

Alleged former NASA employee says there was a secret manned mission to Mars in 1979

 'Jackie' claims she saw humans walking towards the lander in 1979

Conspiracy theorists have gone wild over a ‘confession’ from a woman who claims to be a former NASA employee that she saw human beings on Mars in 1979.

The woman, called ‘Jackie’, called in to American radio station Coast to Coast AM with the claim – which reignited gossip over a ‘secret space programme’ kept from the general public.

Jackie claims to have seen space-suited humans via a live video feed from Mars - but that the information was covered up by NASA bosses.

Viking 1 and 2 sent back the first data from Mars in the 1970s (Sky News)

Jackie claimed to have been part of a ‘downstairs’ team working on downlink telemetry from the Viking Lander - the first vehicle to send back images from the surface of Mars.

"I wonder if you could solve a 27-year-old mystery for me," she asked the presenter. "That old Viking rover was running around. Then I saw two men in space suits – not the bulky suits we normally used, but they looked protective. They came over the horizon walking to the Viking Explorer."

Jackie claims that she and six others witnessed the two humans walking on the surface – and rushed upstairs to the main NASA offices, only to have the door closed in their faces.

"We ran upstairs – but they locked the door, and taped paper over the door so we couldn’t see. My question is – were they our guys?"

Vikings 1 and 2 landed in 1975 and 1976, and sent back the first data about the Martian surface - including a distinct lack of extraterrestrial life.

NASA says, "Although no traces of life were found, Viking found all elements essential to life on Earth – carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus – were present on Mars."

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None of Jackie’s employees have corroborated this story – but UFO sites have talled it with other reports of a ‘secret space programme’ which began when humans landed on Mars in 1968.

Conspiracy theorists believe that this is being kept from the ordinary public for various sinister reasons - and that NASA and other governments are covertly in contact with aliens.

Some of these theorists believe that the current Curiosity Rover is a giant hoax – pointing to the vehicle’s shiny solar panels as ‘evidence’ that they are being polished by humans already on Mars.

Nigel Watson, author of the Haynes UFO Investigations Manual, says, "These accounts of secret space missions seem to be growing in number and remind me of the infamous Project Serpo."

"In November 2005, a contact called ‘anonymous’, who said they worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) started sending information about an extraordinary alien exchange programme, called Project Serpo. Basing his claims on a 3,000-page document written in the late 1970s, he boldly claimed that six aliens were recovered from the Roswell crash.

"Claims that aliens living and/or dead were recovered from the Roswell crash are nothing new, but in this case it was stated that an alien survivor from the crash, called EBE 1, helped to organize twelve specially trained people to visit his home planet Serpo in the Zeta Reticuli solar system. This mission occurred in 1965 and they remained there until 1978. During their stay two of them died, two remained on the planet and the rest, after returning to Earth, have died because of the high levels of radiation they were exposed to on Serpo.

"Bill Ryan who posted these claims online concluded that ‘the Serpo story is a mixture of disinformation (i.e. truth mixed with added fictional elements) and naturally occurring compounded errors…surrounding a core of extraordinary truth."