Supposed missions to Mars faked, dummied down or data misrepresented? Consider, the twin Viking mission of the mid 1970s. Both landers carried experiments to scoop up Martian dirt and examine it for signs of life. Evidences were found. Not what was expected, but evidences were found and subsequently denied to be the sought signs. Which was true in that regard. Fast forward to today: when was the last time that an earnest search for life was done in the Martian dirt? Well, that would again be back with the Viking missions. Basically, the Viking missions were a turning point in space exploration that told them too much about what they weren't ready to handle about life in the solar system.

But the real key is that the Viking orbiters discovered the grooves on Phobos that clearly show that they are artificial. The efforts to study the little rock have either not been done or have supposedly failed. Despite the fact that the body has a unnatural orbit--and shouldn't even be there--and that it has less mass that the shape would dictate which tells us that it contains some manner of hollowness. After all of the missions, we probably know less about Phobos than Titan which has only been approached by one probe. The official mapping of the surface of Phobos was decades late in being released.

So, yeah. There has been shenanigans about Mars from the beginning. The Russians aimed to find life on Venus and shot their wad that direction, and we chose Mars, the jackpot. Too bad the eventual Russian missions to Mars all failed completely or majorly. Such bad luck they had shooting rockets in that direction. Almost makes you wonder....