PAUL DAVIES: Do I believe that there is or was life on Mars?
Yes, I'm absolutely certain of it.
MIKE BARA: There are a lot of different objects on Mars
that look exactly like sculptures
that human beings make.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: We have to ask ourselves
what civilization built this?
And what happened to them?
JOHN BRANDENBURG: There's no natural phenomenon
that can account for this nuclear data.
That is weapon signature.
STEPHEN PETRANEK: Going to Mars, it's something
we know in somewhere in the back of our brains
that we have to do or we die.
NARRATOR: Since the dawn of civilization,
mankind has credited its origins to gods
and other visitors from the stars.
What if it were true?
Did extraterrestrial beings
really help to shape our history?
And if so, might we find the truth
when humans land on Mars?
MAN: We are go for launch.
MAN 2: Roger, go for launch.
NARRATOR: Earth, 2026.
MAN: Five, four, three,
two, one.
We have ignition.
We have lift off.
NARRATOR: Four civilian astronauts
begin their 150-day journey to the Red Planet.
MAN: Velocity 14,899 miles per hour.
NARRATOR: The voyage will take them deeper into space
than any human has ever traveled--
over 128 million miles.
200 times farther than the distance to the moon.
BUZZ ALDRIN: You leave Earth at a pretty high velocity,
and the spacecraft flies
away from the Earth and away from the moon
and away from the sun.
The distance away may not be the biggest concern.
And it only takes five months to get there.
Now, you can certainly, uh, uh, withstand that.
So the-the problem is getting back.
PETRANEK: They're traveling so fast
that they can go through ten feet of solid steel.
So a rocket has to be built
so that it's very, very well shielded
for human beings.
It's not an easy trip.
And there are momentous catastrophes
that could occur.
I kind of like to compare that to when the first explorers
were going across the ocean.
Those were long, horrible journeys as well
and we survived those.
And I really see Mars
as one of the great, first stepping stones
to exploring space.
SUE ANN PIEN: I was born with a fascination for space.
And the only thing I wanted to do was explore.
I wanted to know what was out there,
and get out there.
And so, by the time I heard about Mars One,
it felt like there was a calling, a destiny there.
What an amazing way to kind of give your life
to the greater cause of humanity.
TSOUKALOS: We are a species of explorers.
And the reason why we keep looking out there,
in my opinion, is because that's where we came from.
'Cause you will not find any other organism on Earth
that has such a fascination with space,
with the stars or with anything
that displays such curiosity like human beings.
And our next step will be colonizing Mars.
So the idea
that others have proposed that we are nothing else
but the Martians, so we are bound to go there.
NARRATOR: According to NASA, the colonization of Mars
will begin not with humans, but with robots
sent ahead to construct habitats,
rovers and life-support units.
Food and supplies will be sent next,
and then finally the first humans
will arrive,
ready to start their new lives as Martians.
PIEN: The Martian environment is very different to Earth.
It has 38% of the gravity of Earth.
The daily temperature fluctuations are very extreme.
For instance, if you're near the equator on a summer day,
it can be as warm as 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
But at night, the temperatures could drop down
to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
So there's a lot of things out there that's getting us,
including radiation, as well, and the dust storms.
The atmosphere is incredibly thin--
about one percent of that of Earth.
There's no breathable oxygen there.
The radiation is very high as well.
And so astronauts there
are faced with multiple difficulties.
A Martian day is almost like Earth's.
It's 24 hours and 39 minutes.
So it's just a little bit longer than a day on Earth.
But a Martian year is two years,
because Mars' orbit is twice the size of Earth's.
NARRATOR: Because of the day-night cycle
and the thin atmosphere,
Mars is the only nearby planet where large-scale greenhouses
lit by natural sunlight can be utilized.
These structures will allow the colonizers
to grow their own food
on the cold and barren planet.
Obviously you can't rely on food parcels
from home coming every two years.
You're gonna have to grow your own food.
A lot of people think, "Well, that's pretty straightforward.
"You just take a few potatoes and cabbages, and away you go.
You can do farming on Mars."
Now, research that's been done at Arizona State University
suggests that when you send microorganisms into space,
they behave differently.
They don't like it up there.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of PhD theses
in the last 20 years have been written
about how to grow food on Mars.
And there was a very interesting experiment
done a couple of years ago in Holland,
where NASA provided the Dutch with what they thought
was almost an identical copy of the soil on Mars.
And the Dutch planted 4,200 seeds in it,
of all kinds of different vegetables.
And every single seed germinated.
Some things did better than others--
like carrots grew very well there.
There is no question that we will
be able to grow food on Mars.
But it's gonna be hundreds of years before we grow
enough food on Mars that we can survive from the food we grow.
The only way we're gonna be able to do that
is to terraform the planet, so that it becomes much
more Earth-like so that we can grow crops
on the surface of the planet.
NARRATOR: In recent years,
scientists have proposed various methods to terraform Mars,
deliberately altering it to be more Earth-like.
Most focus on melting the ice at the poles
to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to thicken it.
PETRANEK: If we heat up the poles on Mars,
that causes a significant temperature rise on Mars,
and we start having flowing water on Mars,
especially around the equator.
Then water itself will go into the atmosphere,
which is another greenhouse gas.
And we will warm up Mars.
And we will be able to plant crops on the surface of Mars.
But that's a ways away.
That's probably at least 300 years away.
NARRATOR: With missions from both NASA and the private sector
now officially in the works, humans landing
on Mars is no longer the stuff of science fiction.
But will we really go so far
as to terraform the planet so that
we can establish permanent residency there?
And if so, why?
What is it about Mars that compels us to go there?
Interestingly, the conditions on Earth
three to four billion years ago are thought to be
much different from what they are today.
Like Mars, the planet was relatively uninhabitable
and lacked an atmosphere.
According to ancient astronaut theorists,
directed terraforming
may have been exactly how life was started on Earth.
And as evidence,
they point to our earliest creation stories.
When we look at the world's creation myths,
one of the things that we find throughout these stories
is the idea that the gods sought to create
a stable environment on the Earth.
The story of Genesis could be seen as a step-by-step guide
for terraforming the Earth.
On day one, God or the gods
created the universe.
On day two, the gods created the firmament.
This is described as a dome,
or a boundary separating heaven and Earth.
Followed by the appearance of plants and animals
and later human beings.
GEORGE NOORY: To me, when I look at Genesis,
it is exactly the thought
of an extraterrestrial visitation.
I'm sure there's a god-- there's no doubt about that.
That there's a higher power.
But somewhere along the line, extraterrestrials
came down to this planet, created us,
maybe even terraformed the planet,
so that it could be adaptable to life.
Heck, we're talking about doing that on Mars right now.
The things that we'll be doing on Mars may be
exactly the same things that extraterrestrials did
when they came to our planet.
We'll be terraforming that planet.
Creating a more conducive atmosphere.
Melting icecaps to create rivers and lakes.
And then perhaps even genetically manipulating
organisms to better survive on that planet.
And perhaps mankind is being guided by extraterrestrials
to go to Mars and colonize that Red Planet.
NARRATOR: With our plans to colonize Mars,
are humans actually following in the footsteps
of extraterrestrials that came to Earth
in the remote past?
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that not only
is this the case, but that there is even evidence
these alien visitors might have come here
from the very planet that is now our destination.
NARRATOR: On March 10, 2006,
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached its destination,
and began orbiting 186 miles
above the Martian surface.
It has circled the planet over 40,000 times and has sent
over 264 terabytes of data
and 200,000 images
back to researchers on Earth.
On September 28, 2015,
NASA scientists announced
that the images received from the Orbiter
had finally led to the kind
of groundbreaking discovery they were hoping for--
evidence of water on Mars.
Photographs taken by the Orbiter
reveal streaks that appear to ebb and flow through the year,
much like the seasonal flow of rivers on Earth.
PETRANEK: Astrobiologists have had a wake-up call.
If there is flowing underground water on Mars,
and since we know that all the chemicals structures on Mars
for life are the same as they are on Earth.
If you have that, it's unlikely
that there is not life on Mars.
DAVIES: The big question everybody wants to know is--
is there enough there for Mars life?
And in my view, the answer is yes.
You don't have to have liquid water lying around
like a pond in order for microbes to make a living.
There are microorganisms on Earth
that live in Mars-like conditions.
So do I believe that there is or was life on Mars?
And I say yes, I'm absolutely certain of it.
NARRATOR: In 1996,
NASA researchers studying
a Martian meteorite found on the Alan Hill ice fields
of Antarctica
announce a shocking discovery--
evidence of past microbial life
on Mars.
They backed away from this conclusion
shortly after it made international headlines.
Over a decade later,
scientists re-examining the meteorite
determine that it does indeed contain organic matter
and evidence of bacterial fossils.
The evidence for microbial life on early Mars
from the meteorites is now very strong.
It's almost overwhelming.
Not only do some of the Mars meteorites
show signs of early life on Mars,
almost every one of them does.
NARRATOR: While evidence of microbial life
in Mars meteorites is groundbreaking,
in 2013, geochemist Steven Benner
presented findings suggesting
these meteorites point to a possibility
even more astonishing than the notion
that there was once life on Mars.
He claims that they may be responsible
for seeding life here on Earth.
Benner reached this conclusion when he found
that particular elements believed to be crucial
to the origin of life are not readily available on Earth,
and would only have been present
on the surface of the Red Planet.
I've always felt that Mars was actually
a better place than Earth for life to get going.
Now Steve Benner recently has added to the appeal of Mars
as the cradle of life
by pointing out that certain elements that are actually
essential for organic chemistry to work properly
like boron and molybdenum,
which are more abundant on Mars than they are on Earth.
We can imagine that life on Earth started on Mars,
so in a sense we're all Martians or descended from Martians.
(indistinct chatter)
NARRATOR: Life on Earth seeded from Mars?
Could we, in fact, be Martians?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest that this seeding of Earth
may even have been a directed effort
orchestrated by human-like beings
that existed on the Red Planet.
And they claim these extraterrestrial ancestors
can be found in the apocryphal texts
of the Hebrew bible,
represented as the "fallen angels."
We know from ancient legend of the books of Enoch,
that there was a group of angels
who descended to Earth
in violation of divine law.
They introduced to humanity
ways, means, knowledge,
which we would understand today as science and technology.
These angels were in human form.
They were called, in Hebrew, Ishim, which means men.
They looked just like us.
YOUNG: The fallen angels were giants.
They were at least ten feet tall, very striking to look at.
Enormous eyes.
And no wings.
HENRY: For over 100 years, mythologists
have been contemplating this idea that the fallen angels
came from Mars to Earth.
Even Dante described this in the Paradiso.
He called this the fifth level of heaven.
Is it possible that the fallen angels
came to Earth from Mars?
NARRATOR: Could we reinterpret the story of fallen angels
as beings not from heaven,
but from Mars?
Based on examination of the astronauts
living in the International Space Station,
scientists have speculated on what physiological changes
might be seen in future generations
of humans born on Mars.
And ancient astronaut theorists suggest
the resemblance to the description of fallen angels
may be uncanny.
PIEN: One of the most amazing things about the human body
is its ability to adapt.
And if you look at astronauts who go into space,
they actually grow about two or three inches.
And when you have a human that's born on Mars,
what's gonna happen is the environment
will change the structure of the human body.
And what you're gonna see in a few generations
is humans that are taller and skinnier,
because the gravity on Mars is less than that of Earth.
BARA: If humans evolve long enough on the planet Mars,
they could grow to be taller,
they'd have the bigger heads;
they'd have the spindly limbs.
They might actually grow slightly larger eyes
that were equipped to see better in the dark,
because you simply have less sunlight on Mars
than you do on the Earth,
because it's farther away from the sun.
They could also end up looking like representations
of angels and various
other god-like beings that we've read about
in the Bible and other ancient documents.
CHILDRESS: These attributes to somebody
from a low-gravity planet like Mars
or being in space for a long time
may well be the attributes that we see
of the fallen angels being very tall
and-and spindly
and-and perhaps pale
and with large eyes.
Something that we might expect to be coming
from another planet like Mars.
NARRATOR: Might life on Earth
really have originated on Mars?
And is it possible it was not by chance,
but by design?
And if so, just what happened to the Martians?
Perhaps clues can be found by examining
what some say is undeniable evidence
of weapons of mass destruction.
NARRATOR: Spanning 2,500 miles
across the equatorial region of the Red Planet
is a colossal gash in the crust.
Called the Valles Marineris,
it is over four miles deep,
which is four times the depth of the Grand Canyon.
And it runs a length equal
to the span of the United States
from New York to California.
DENNIN: The Valles Marineris
is one of the biggest tranches on Mars.
It was named after one of the Mariner missions in the '70s.
It has some very interesting geological features.
It's quite huge.
So it's really an interesting challenge
to figure out what formed this valley.
DAVIES: It is truly immense.
And the question is, uh,
why did these features occur on Mars on such a grand scale?
The Grand Canyon is, you know, created by the Colorado River.
I don't think the Valles Marineris
was created by a river.
It's very clear that it hasn't been made
by water erosion.
NARRATOR: The prevailing scientific theory
suggests that the gash
may be the result of volcanic activity
combined with shifts in crustal plates.
However, engineer Ralph Juergens
argued in his 1974 article, "Of the Moon and Mars,"
that the geographic features of the Valles Marineris
did not show signs of being torn and upended
as is typical of volcanic thrusts.
But rather, it appeared to be carved out.
Juergens proposed that the feature
resembled the residual marks
left behind by an electrical discharge.
According to his theory,
the area was zapped by a powerful cosmic thunderbolt,
carving out the landscape as it advanced across the surface,
blasting material into space.
Although NASA scientists
dismiss the theory,
it has been gaining traction with electrical engineers.
By using
two electrodes to create an electrical arc
over a sandy surface, they have been able
to demonstrate on a small-scale
how the Valles Marineris could have been carved out
by an electric bolt.
You don't see this type of thing with a volcano
or an earthquake or any other type of natural occurrence.
The feature itself resembles
many of the electric discharges that we've done.
NARRATOR: But could a cosmic thunderbolt
be responsible for the massive gash across Mars?
If so, was it a natural occurrence
or an attack?
There are some very interesting stories
of ancient advanced thunderbolt-like weapons.
For example, in the Norse, Greek, and Vedic traditions,
there is a weapon that can destroy entire worlds.
In the Vedic text,
uh, what is found is called "Vajra."
"Vajra" means thunderbolt.
And this is a very powerful weapon
that God Indra carries.
And it was a special weapon that was designed
to destroy this giant called Vritra.
Vritra represented the dark force.
And then he was creating havoc in the universe.
So he had to be destroyed.
And Indra used this weapon
to destroy this giant.
CHILDRESS: Vajra is this super lightning bolt strike
that devastates everything
and is the most destructive weapon that the gods have.
And if you look on Mars that scar appears to be
from some huge electric strike.
Perhaps this Vajra weapon of Indra
that is hitting the planet
and creating a huge canyon
and may be what
really changed Mars.
It would seem that these weapons
are extraterrestrial in nature.
NARRATOR: Could the Vajra described
in the ancient Vedic texts
be a super weapon used against the planet?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest there is even evidence
of other weapons of mass destruction
being detonated on the Red Planet.
In a 2014 paper
published in The Journal of Cosmology,
physicist Dr. John Brandenburg
presented findings indicating
that someone or something
wiped out life on Mars
with massive nuclear explosions.
BRANDENBURG: There's an enormous spike in xenon 129
in the Martian atmosphere.
Xenon 129 is produced
by very violent nuclear reactions.
I originally proposed as an explanation
that this was a natural nuclear reactor that had gone unstable.
However, as I talked to more scientists,
they said the xenon spectrum is wrong.
That is weapon signature.
That is not from any kind of natural nuclear reactor.
The pattern of radiation
on the Mars surface indicates
that there is a global debris pattern
extending from two hot spots of radiation
in the north of Mars
going all the way around the planet.
The regions of the residual radioactivity
are covered in glass--
the same sort of acid-etched glass
that was found at nuclear test sites.
It's called trinitite.
So thousands of square miles of Mars' surface
apparently were turned to glass.
Someone apparently dropped two massive nuclear weapons on Mars
to explode in mid-air.
There's no natural phenomenon
that can account for this nuclear data.
So we must go to Mars.
We must find out exactly what happened there.
NARRATOR: Are there really tell-tale signs
of orchestrated mass destruction on Mars?
If so, might some of the survivors
have made it to Earth?
Perhaps further evidence can be found
by examining the landscape of Mars,
and its mysterious formations
that some say are alien artifacts.
NARRATOR: 554 solar days
after the Mars Curiosity Rover touched down,
it beams its latest high-resolution
panoramic photographs of the Mars landscape to Earth.
Upon inspection, amateur archaeologists
announce a startling discovery--
what appears to be an effigy
located at the Dingo Gap,
resembling a human statue.
The find is just one of the dozens
of strange earth-like objects sighted in the Rover images--
including a sarcophagus...
a Buddha statue...
...and even a cross.
BARA: There are a lot
of different objects on Mars that people see,
or think they see, in various rover images.
And it's really hard to dismiss them,
because they do look exactly
like sculptures that human beings make.
And even after a massive cataclysm,
like what apparently took place on Mars,
you're gonna find remnants from a lost civilization
that's just leaving behind those last hints that
we were here.
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists
have considered that there may be
artifacts and unnatural structures on Mars
since the first images where beamed back
from the Mars Viking Mission
in 1979.
NASA officials claim the perceived likeness
of formations on Mars to man-made objects
is due to Pareidolia,
where the mind perceives a familiar pattern,
like seeing shapes in clouds.
But some imaging experts are not convinced
that it's just a trick of the eye.
Joe White has been working
in image restoration for 25 years,
and claims to have found artifacts on the Martian surface
that defy explanation.
JOE WHITE: The Rover images
are generally fairly close-up, and it is possible
to spot things like statue heads and stone blocks,
sometimes with writing on and carvings in them.
It's such a shame they, they do so much to destroy these images.
But basically what they do is they resize them down
so that the detail's all lost.
But because I've worked in photographic restoration,
I know how to do it.
All I've done with this is actually enhanced the contrast
and sharpened it a little bit.
The details I noticed first were
particularly the eye and nose details
on the front of the, of the, the statue on the left here
with a very quite clear mouth structure
and what looks like an ear, just here.
And you have a long narrow elongated cone head shape
to the statue.
Now this may well be an elaborate headdress
on this statue here, which seems to be broken off.
But it's hard to say for sure.
I mean this is a, it's a damaged statue,
buried up to its chin
and there's probably a lot more of it
buried just below in the sand.
But you can actually see quite clearly
it's the sort of thing you would expect to find
somewhere like Central or South America.
NARRATOR: Might there actually be ruins of a lost civilization
scattered across the Martian landscape?
Ruins that mirror those that exist on our own planet?
Ancient Astronaut theorists say yes,
and propose that this is
one of many artifacts on Mars
that seem to have counterparts on our Earth.
Certain structures on Mars may be completely
related to structures here on Earth.
On Mars, we have structures that look like pyramids.
There are standing stones
and Stonehenge-type of structures on Mars.
There's also a structure on Mars that looks like a Sphinx.
BARA: Around Cydonia, there are many, many objects,
including an area called "the city,"
where the so-called face on Mars is located.
There's a massive pentagonal pyramid.
There's a cluster of other pyramidal objects
that are nearby.
And one of the things that's really interesting
about the city is that some people have pointed out that
if you take the apex of all of the pyramidal structures there--
and there are number of them--
that they basically match the layout of the Pleiades.
Now, this is something that we've seen here on Earth.
We've seen various ancient architectural monuments
that are also laid out to reflect
the constellation of the Pleiades.
TSOUKALOS: Is it possible that the structures on Mars
are real and of artificial origin?
That is something where all of science says,
"No, impossible."
Well, is it really?
Water on Mars-- impossible, right?
No, it has been proven.
So we have to ask ourselves
what civilization built this?
And what happened to them?
And some have suggested that they actually escaped Mars
and came to Earth to ensure their survival.
HENRY: When we look to these extraordinary structures
on Earth, similar to what we're now seeing on Mars,
it makes you wonder did our ancient extraterrestrial
ancestors teach humans how to build these monuments?
And knowing that one day, we would rediscover our roots
on Mars and be able to match up what we've done on Earth
with what we had already done on Mars.
NARRATOR: Might the various structures and artifacts
found on the surface of Mars
really be evidence of a past Martian civilization?
A civilization that was recreated on Earth?
If so, why would NASA try to hide this connection?
And might there be more
that the public isn't being told?
NARRATOR: The $2.5 billion Mars Curiosity
is the most advanced rover yet to explore the Martian terrain.
Beyond obtaining high-resolution photographs,
as well as soil and air samples,
as it travels across the surface of the planet--
it is also able to turn the camera on itself.
A feature that enables engineers at NASA
to diagnose and troubleshoot issues from Earth.
Curiously, 50 solar days into its mission,
the rover beamed a mysterious photograph back to Earth
showing what appeared to some researchers
to be the shadow of a human-like figure
working on the Rover.
CHILDRESS: You could see a person there.
And even it seemed that he was not wearing a helmet,
but was in some kind of gear and goggles.
And it made people speculate that what might be going on
on Mars is more than what NASA
and also the military space program
has said that we can achieve.
BARA: NASA knows so much more about Mars
than they are telling us.
They put pictures out.
They allow things to come out.
They do not comment on them, in general,
but they just allow people with eyes, who want to see,
to look at these things and understand what they are.
But they don't say anything about it,
because they are constrained by the political realities.
NOORY: A couple of years go,
we got a call from a person named Jackie,
who claimed that she was a former NASA employee.
And she went on with this profound story
about how our rovers
had sent back pictures that NASA has suppressed
of humans on Mars walking around.
And she was very compelling.
She seemed to know exactly what she was talking about.
There's always been a theory that there's a space program
beyond the space program that we know.
It's a black ops program.
It's the program where trillions of dollars merely disappear,
and nobody knows where the money went.
And nobody knows what's going on.
BARA: A Scottish hacker named Gary McKinnon
actually hacked into the NASA database,
and discovered a file, which contained a list
of what were called non-terrestrial officers--
officers in the military that were actually
living and working off of the planet Earth.
Now, "non-terrestrial" doesn't necessarily mean "Mars."
But it does mean "out in space."
And what that indicates is that there is some kind
of top-secret space program
that exists that the public doesn't know about.
NARRATOR: Could there really be
a secret U.S. military operation on Mars?
If so, just how long has it been going on?
Some researchers suggest that a feasible plan
to get to Mars was conceived
well before we even made it to the moon
and by the same scientist that got us there.
PETRANEK: Wernher Von Braun was a rocket genius,
and he was obsessed with going to Mars.
He was obsessed with rocketry.
And he wrote a book in 1948 called The Mars Project.
And it's basically a 91-page manual on how to get to Mars.
It has all the computations worked out,
all the formulas for what home and transfer orbits
you need to use to get to Mars.
He actually projected
that he could put people on Mars by 1965.
Everything he put in that 91-page manual
is actually still valid today.
NOORY: Wernher Von Braun outlined our plan
to go to Mars and colonize it.
Well, everybody thinks, "Well, we just never did that."
There are other people that think we took his playbook
and that we indeed did colonize Mars,
and that we have a colony of astronauts there
right now under his tutelage when he was alive.
DAVID WILCOCK: There's compelling evidence
that Von Braun was working secretly
with elements of the U.S. government
in an attempt to try to make it to Mars.
Is it possible that was done?
Do you think it's possible that the government
could keep something a secret?
Absolutely.
Go back to the Manhattan Project.
When they developed the nuclear bomb, there was over
140,000 personnel involved in that program.
No one squealed.
No one said what they were doing
and many of those people were unaware of what
they were working on until the bomb itself was detonated.
So Von Braun could've been working
on a secret Mars program,
and with the same level of secrecy
as the Manhattan Project,
it still to this day could be highly classified
and never released to the public at large.
NARRATOR: Werner Von Braun's genius is credited
with being the reason we ever made it to the moon.
Might he also have orchestrated a secret mission to Mars?
And if so, what was its purpose?
NARRATOR: Torrance, California,
2015.
The board members of a private space agency lead by Elon Musk,
Space X,
announce that the explicit aim of the organization
is and always has been to help humanity colonize Mars.
ELON MUSK: I do think it is important
that we as a species, as a civilization,
are on a path to become a true space-far--
a true space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species.
Elon Musk's position is that humans
cannot survive indefinitely on Earth,
and there are a lot of threats to the continuation
of human life on Earth--
both from what we're doing to our own planet,
but also from things like asteroids.
We get a single hit from an asteroid that's as big
as the one that took out the dinosaurs.
And that, by the way, is a 100% probability
that that is going to happen, sooner or later.
Going to Mars, it's a survival instinct.
It's something we know, it's somewhere
in the back of our brains that we have to do or we die.
BARA: I think that's the message of the ruins of Mars is that
this can happen to you.
And you should think about, as a species,
ways to ensure that the human race is not wiped out,
because despite our flaws, we're a very
noble, powerful, important part of this universe.
CHILDRESS: It's something that will take us
back to our very beginnings.
And here we'll be really following in the footsteps
of the ancient astronauts, who came to Earth.
And ultimately, we will be like them,
being the extraterrestrials ourselves
and colonizing a foreign planet.
HENRY: When we colonize Mars,
it's a retracing of ancient footsteps.
It will be a reconnection and a remembering
of where we came from.
And it may be that colonizing Mars
will be our ultimate salvation.
TSOUKALOS: Mars is a very, very logical point,
if life on Earth ever should become impossible,
that's our next step where to go if the survival of our species
is at the forefront.
Because maybe that's where we came from.
So maybe we earthlings are the Martians.
Then the question is
has this game been going back and forth
for hundreds of thousands of years?
NARRATOR: Is it possible
that the colonization of Mars
is the key to our continued survival?
And if so, have we stood
on this precipice before?
Could there have been a human presence
on Mars thousands of years ago?
Perhaps we will discover
the truth about our alien ancestors
when we become the extraterrestrials
on Mars.
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