10 Highly Bizarre Space Conspiracy Theories

Outer space is filled with mysteries, and it is no surprise that many modern myths and weird conspiracy theories relate to the infinite vacuum hugging our little blue speck. In the past, we have talked about secret NASA plans to ignite Jupiter, Barack Obama’s teenage excursion to the red planet, and a mysterious alien satellite lurking in orbit around Earth. But we just couldn’t stop there.

10 Martian Nuclear War

In 2014, Dr. John Brandenburg published his paper “Evidence of a Massive Thermonuclear Explosion on Mars in the Past, the Cydonian Hypothesis and Fermi’s Paradox” in the somewhat dubious Journal of Cosmology. His theory is based on the presence of radioactive isotopes like xenon-129 in the Martian atmosphere, which can only be created by nuclear detonation according to Brandenburg.

Although he once believed that there was a nuclear explosion on Mars caused by natural forces, he now believes that there was once a humanoid civilization living on Mars that was destroyed by nuclear warfare. He is also one of the authors of Dead Mars, Dying Earth, which uses this history of Martian extinction as a cautionary tale for our own world.

He believes that there were actually two species of indigenous Martians, whom he calls the Cydonians and the Utopians. According to Brandenburg, they had the technological level of the ancient Egyptians. Some see the supposed structures on Mars that are captured by NASA images as evidence of these ancient cultures.

They didn’t destroy themselves but were rather the victims of nuclear attack from space. Brandenburg cannot tell us who was responsible, but he is willing to speculate in the conclusion to his paper:

Such hostile forces could range from things as alien as AI (Artificial Intelligence) “with a grudge” against flesh and blood, as in the movie Terminator, all the way to things as sadly familiar to us as a mindless humanoid bureaucrat like Governor Tarkin in Star Wars, eager to destroy planet Alderaan as an example to other worlds.

9 Ancient Space Programs

The idea of a secret space program based on alien technology that was recovered at Roswell is fairly common in the conspiracy world, but some look even further back in time. Some believe that a number of ancient human cultures possessed space programs of their own, which were kept secret from their own populations in the same way that the US government keeps its fleet of UFOs a secret from the general public.

According to so-called whistle-blower Corey Goode, there are a number of “breakaway human civilizations” based on ancient secret space programs. They exist throughout the universe and engage in politics and intrigue with alien races. Several of these breakaway human cultures are said to have masqueraded as gods in history and do deals with modern governments while pretending to be alien races.

One breakaway human civilization is made up of the members of the Mayan space program, whom Goode confesses to rather like. Being quite short and wearing sky-blue “priestly” uniforms, Goode thought that they looked like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Oompa-Loompas, a mental observation that they had apparently picked up telepathically without being offended. Their technology is based on a neurological interface, and their ships are cylinders made of stone.

Goode also reported being present at a group meeting of ancient space program representatives, who have apparently relocated to hidden terraformed lairs beneath the Earth to hide from planetary and extraterrestrial enemies. He reported seeing delegates from breakaway cultures who had African, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean features. The Maya were conspicuously absent from these proceedings.

This alliance is opposed to the modern-day secret space program, which is allied with nasty aliens such as the Raptors and is controlled by an intergenerational cult that dates back to Roman times.

8 German Colonies On Mars

Another set of wild claims from Corey Goode pertains to a supposed German colonization of the Moon and Mars in the 1940s by the Thule, Vril, and Black Sun secret societies. This was an effort that was apparently independent from the SS quest to build weaponized flying saucers in the same period.

Using hidden bases in Antarctica and South America, these secret societies explored technologies like antigravity and space-time portals that were developed with records from ancient space programs of the Far East and extraterrestrial advice. The entire program was kept secret from the Nazi political leadership and the German military authorities.

The early German colonies on Mars were at the mercy of dust storms that initially wreaked havoc on their electronics. Then they discovered hospitable regions above the 20th parallel where they could be safe. There, they stumbled upon an ancient complex of lava tubes where they could build more secure bases. They soon ran afoul of the Reptilians and the Insectoids, two species of indigenous subterranean Martians.

After making a show of force over Washington, DC, in 1952, the secret societies of Mars made an alliance with the US military-industrial complex. Although the Americans intended to take over the German bases, the secret societies ended up infiltrating and taking over American power positions and high-tech industries.

The influence of the Nazi secret society in the modern secret space program is most obvious in the “Dark Fleet,” which has a Nazi style to its uniforms and ships.

7 Alien Comet-Ship

The successful landing of the probe Philae on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the European Space Agency (ESA) resulted in many astounding scientific findings. But according to a supposed whistle-blower in the ESA, the purpose of the comet mission was much weirder.

In an anonymous email, the whistle-blower claimed that 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko wasn’t a comet at all but something from which NASA started receiving signals 20 years earlier.

NASA scientists had noted that the comet seemed to be performing the impossible feat of changing trajectory in space by itself. The ESA scientific mission was merely a smoke screen for a military reconnaissance mission by American and European governments to find out what was going on.

The email explained the whistle-blower’s logic:

Do not think for ONE MOMENT that a space agency would suddenly decide to spend billions of dollars to build and send a spacecraft on a 12-year journey to simply take some close-up images of a randomly picked out comet floating in space.

The source also mentions that the exterior of the comet has mechanical features and unnatural terrain. Other conspiracy theorists have supposedly spotted a UFO near the surface of the planet (which actually looks more like the USS Enterprise if you squint) and a rock formation that they claim is an alien face.

6 Apollo 10 And The Monolith

According to this theory, the Apollo 10 astronauts—Thomas Stafford, Eugene Cernan, and John Young—saw an extraterrestrial beacon in orbit around the Earth. The object resembled the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey and was allegedly first glimpsed by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American astronaut Alan Shepard.

Apollo 10 apparently made a clandestine approach to photograph the message and star map etched into the side of the monolith, but electrical emanations from the object wreaked havoc with onboard instruments, almost causing a mission failure.

In 1972, the beacon was recovered by a secret military space shuttle and taken to a domed underwater research facility hidden north of the Bahamas. The monolith was said to emit tones and lights in some kind of mathematical language.

It was studied by researchers like Carl Sagan and US Army Intelligence and Security Command General Albert Stubblebine. Most of the researchers who worked on the monolith eventually contracted cancer.

Believers say that there are many such alien beacons, which may have been left by up to five extraterrestrial civilizations. A supposed NSA informant known as Jesse believes that “Mother Russia had one.”

Skeptics point out that the technical problems reported by the Apollo 10 mission were all standard spaceflight hiccups and that any secret shuttle launch in 1972 would have been noticed by space watchers on the ground.

5 Space Angels

On day 155 of their mission in 1984, cosmonauts aboard the Soviet space station Salyut 7 allegedly experienced a blinding orange light which illuminated the interior, even passing through opaque walls. Looking out the portholes, they saw that the station was surrounded by seven angels with wings and halos. Each was roughly the size of a 747. The angels remained for 10 minutes before vanishing.

On day 167, after they had been joined by three more cosmonauts arriving in the Soyuz T-12 spacecraft, the incident supposedly occurred again. After the mission was over, the Soviet authorities allegedly hushed up the divine encounter.

Cosmonauts aren’t the only ones to have supposedly glimpsed angels in space. Since 1995, the Solar And Heliospheric Observatory has allegedly glimpsed images of angelic beings flying near the Sun. NASA says that the images are merely image-processing errors, but conspiracy theorists insist that they must be angels or aliens.

Some even believe that NASA has repeatedly taken photographs of ethereal beings in space and shared the information with the Vatican. One supposed engineer described them like this:

[There were] seven giant figures. All had wings and mist-like halos. They were about 80 feet tall and had wingspans as large as airplanes. Their faces were round and peaceful, and they were all beaming. It seemed like they were overjoyed at being photographed by the Hubble Telescope. They seemed to be smiling at each other as if they were letting the rest of the universe in on a glorious secret.

Although NASA apparently believes that they are protective guardian angels, the Vatican has identified them as angels representing the seven churches of Asia and the “seven periods of the church.” Supposedly, Pope John Paul II feared that they were “not the benevolent beings they have been made out to be.”

4 Cryptids Of Mars

Conspiracy theorists seem to like squinting at blurry pictures of lakes and forests to spot mysterious animals as much as they like interpreting rock or terrain formations as evidence of alien structures or faces. So it should come as no surprise that some combine the two joys.

Images captured by the Curiosity rover in 2016 were interpreted by some as showing clear evidence of a Martian Loch Ness monster, which presumably lives in sand.

Back in 2008, NASA’s Mars rover Spirit captured an image which some believed to be a bigfoot living on Mars. The standard explanation is that it was merely a small rock near the rover. But some prefer to take it as evidence of a Sasquatch that is 5 centimeters (2 in) tall lounging casually on the Martian surface.

However, this pales in comparison to the variety of alien creatures and structures reportedly seen in the images by veteran conspiracist Andrew D. Basiago. These include “beings with bald, bulbous heads” sitting in lotus positions and surrounded by ibis and penguin-like creatures.

There is also a “large statue or skeleton of a humanoid with a pointy head and large, elephantine ears. [ . . . ] This skull may be the fossilized head of a giant primate in Martian history or simply the statue of a demon.”

For those who worry about facing some ferocious Martian beast unarmed, some sources reveal that you might be able to pick up an alien handgun lying on the desert surface.

3 Pluto Truther Movement

YouTube user Crrow777 is at the forefront of a conspiracy theory movement called Pluto trutherism. He believes that NASA faked the images of the former planet Pluto that were captured by the New Horizons probe. Altering the color channels of an image of Pluto, he supposedly detected “a ghosting image all the way around it: first indicator of shenanigans.”

Crrow777 also claims that he got a clearer image of Jupiter using his backyard telescope from 400 million miles away than NASA got of Pluto from 9 million miles away. He believes that this is clear evidence that these images were computer-generated pictures of Pluto.

Some conspiracy theorists dismiss the whole mission as a fabrication while others say that Pluto doesn’t exist. However, there is also the view that the New Horizons probe wasn’t intended to visit Pluto the planet. Instead, it was a Masonic or Illuminati ritual (or possibly both) to pay homage to Pluto, the god of death. The actual target of New Horizons is the so-called Planet X (aka Nibiru), which is destined to destroy Earth someday.

Much is made of the fact that the probe carried some of the ashes of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto, possibly with two quarters that represented the ancient practice of placing coins over the eyes of the deceased.

Even the name New Horizons is said to have occult significance. The word “horizon” comes from the Greek word horos, which is similar to “Horus,” the Greek name of the Egyptian god Horakhty (aka Horus of the two horizons).

2 Throne Of God

Some Christians believe that Heaven is a physical place within our universe, and a minority even believe that it is somewhere in the Orion Nebula.

They believe that hints are given in the Bible, specifically Job 26:9 (“He holdeth back the face of his throne and spreadeth his cloud upon it”), Job 22:12–14 (“Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are! And thou sayest, How doth God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud? Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not, and he walketh in the circuit of Heaven”), and Revelation 4:1–3, which in some translations refers to the throne of God being in an “emerald-tinted cloud.”

The fact that “nebula” means “cloud” is a key part of this interpretation. The fact that Orion’s Belt is around 1,500 light-years away is not a problem in this theory but rather a feature. It merely illustrates that prayer reaches the ears of God much faster than the speed of light—as did the angel Gabriel when he came from Heaven to Earth to answer Daniel’s prayer.

Some believe that Orion’s beauty and massive size obviously make it an aperture into the heavens. Through it, Jesus Christ and all the inhabitants of Heaven will descend upon the Earth during the Second Coming and the Holy City will also arrive on Earth during the Third Coming.

Others vehemently disagree. Rather than Heaven, Orion’s belt for these people is the location of the throne of Satan, where he will build a false copy of New Jerusalem to deceive the people of Earth. This fake city (aka Crystal or Rainbow City) will arrive from the direction of Orion’s Belt. One source also mentions that it might emerge from the hollow Earth.

1 The Clementine Conspiracy

YouTube user 1967sander claims to have developed a theory called Project Golden Dragon that is based on 14 years of research. He asserts that NASA’s Clementine lunar flyby mission in 1994 was a cover for a conspiracy.

Supposed evidence of this can be seen in a cryptographic message hidden in the mission logo, including a dodgy depiction of the US flag that allegedly suggests a false flag operation. In his view, Clementine was actually a mission by the US Department of Defense to take pictures of alien technology hidden in the Zeeman crater on the far side of the Moon.

1967sander goes on to reveal supposed evidence of a huge object photographed by Clementine—55 kilometers (35 mi) long and 23 kilometers (14 mi) high—which NASA supposedly tried to hide by smudging the image and calling it a digital error. The outline of the object supposedly reflects a specific configuration that is hidden in the logo of the Clementine mission.

He interprets the object as being a giant alien machine, consisting of many multicolored parts or scales that are able to move in any direction. Supposedly, this indicates a biomechanical technology capable of shape-shifting.

1967sander believes that the object moves like a caterpillar on multiple legs across the lunar surface. By making further “enhancements” of the original image, he picked up more details, such as a suction unit for spraying chemicals and even possible mandibles.

He also states that there is a link between the mysterious biomechanical creature and ancient stories of Chinese dragons. This is based on convoluted numerology and an extremely vague resemblance between the so-called object and the traditional Chinese character for “dragon.”

He believes that ancient Chinese stories of dragons were actually descriptions of smaller versions of the same alien technology that the US Department of Defense is studying on the Moon. According to 1967sander, these devices probably came to Earth first to excavate certain material.

Luckily, he believes that the Moon dragons are not hostile. However, he feels that the government should tell the public what it knows about the alien technology on the Moon.

David Tormsen has his own space program, but neither the Maya nor the Nazis are answering his calls. Email him at [email protected].