having exercised de facto power of sovereignty over the surface of the Planet Mars for almost five years the USSR committed a blatant abrogatation of the UN Outer Space Treaty by declaring supreme, independent authority over the Cydonia Region in the name of the sixteenth Soviet Socialist Republic.

The "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Please click the icon to follow us on Facebook.Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies" was opened for signature in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on January 27, 1967, and entered into force on October 10, 1967.

The key provisions of the Treaty formed the basic legal framework of international space law prohibiting space-faring nations from:

• Placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space
• Claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, since they are considered to be the Common heritage of mankind
• Exploring outer space for any purposes other than the benefit of all countries and use by all States

As of 1 January 1989, ninety-eight countries were states-parties to the treaty, while another twenty-seven had signed the Treaty but had not yet completed ratification. The USSR then withdrew from the commitments of the Treaty to protest the activation of the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) programme. Just three weeks later the Phobos II mission successfully completed the Mars orbital insertion phase. It did not require Cold War paranoia to conclude that the timing of this strategic breakthrough strongly suggested that the announcement might have greater significance than a diplomatic protest.

The extension of the Iron Curtain into Outer Space, also the abrogration of a thirty-five year old Treaty became the language of diplomatic posturing at the United Nations. And yet the rising panic inside the White House was fuelled by uncertainty as to how the Soviet Union had accelerated their space programme in such a short space of time. And precisely what led them to the mysterious Cydonia Region famously known as the "face on Mars". And indeed what the Soviet engineers might have discovered there.