NASA's  Discovery
Space shuttle Discovery's final mission to the International Space Station is set Feb. 24 at 4:50 pm from a seaside pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA is counting down to the planned launch of the spacecraft. NASA

In a radical twist to NASA's accomplishments, British journalist and author Nick Redfern has raised many questions on the space agency efforts in exploring outer space, including the Apollo moon landings, the controversial face on Mars, UFO sightings and other secret space programs.

In his new book, The NASA Conspiracies, Redfern blames high-level cover-ups by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration eversince it was established in 1958 and illustrates how it failed to tell the truth to the world about its space missions. All the while, behind the open, friendly face of NASA is a dark and mysterious, ominous world, a world littered with high-level cover-ups, he says.

Some of the cover-ups that he said NASA resorted to in the past include the claims that the Apollo moon landings were faked in an effort to show technological superiority over the former Soviet Union which was billed Sputnik crisis.

On the controversial face on Mars, which many believe to be a carved structure created in the remote past by long-extinct, indigenous Martians, he says the huge structure which stares eerily into outer?space and resembles an Egyptian Sphinx?like face. NASA says it is merely a natural mesa, but for others, it is evidence that, millennia ago, Mars was home to a now?long?extinct race of beings that built the mighty face. Is NASA engaged in a cosmic conspiracy to conceal the truth, or is the huge face simply a trick of the light? he questions the world's renowned space agency.

On a widely reported incident of UFO crash at Roswell, he questions whether NASA is guilty of hiding evidence that UFOs have visited our world, and that NASA’s own astronauts have seen UFOs? Does NASA have in its secret possession proof that UFOs have crashed to earth and, along with their alien crews, are secretly hidden at top secret NASA facilities? Has NASA censored its own photographs to hide the facts about alien visitations?

Further, he alleges that Deep Throat-like NASA sources have earlier attempted to blow the lid on NASA’s most guarded secrets and cites the tragic explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986 on which he says the FBI opened a secret file that was packed with reports, witness testimony, and documentation that examined a key issue of sabotage of the Shuttle.

The FBI has now declassified its files on the affair, and which tell an extraordinary and strange story of psychics, secret?agents, shadowy terrorist groups and more, he says defending his writings.

Redfern has also pondered the allegations that NASA has a secret space program that runs parallel to its publicized missions and has access to technologies far in advance of the space shuttle and space technology.The reported discovery by NASA of some intelligently-designed structures on the surface of the Moon and Venus also form part of his book. But that is not all: behind the scenes, there is a very different NASA; a darker and shadowy NASA, he writes.

Redfern, who has written for over a decade on issues like visit of aliens in Mexico, lake monsters in scotland, vampires in Puerto Rico, werewolves in England, ETs, Bigfoot, and crashed UFOs in the United States, is now coming out with his new book which is likely to hold NASA accountable or at least issue clarifications.

Redfern is a familiar face on the History Channel’s “Monster Quest” and “UFO Hunters”; the National Geographic Channel’s “Paranatural”, and the Syfy Channel’s “Proof Positive” and writes for UFO Magazine, Fate, Fortean Times, and Paranormal Magazine.

His research took him to Puerto Rico in search of the blood?sucking Chupacabras; to Roswell, New Mexico to explore the truth behind the famous UFO crash of 1947 and to Wisconsin in pursuit of the infamous Mothman.

Originally from England, he runs the American office of the British?based Center for Fortean Zoology in Arlington, Texas. His center probes such extinct or unknown animals as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabras, sea?serpents, and the Abominable Snowman.