Anomaly or Noah's Ark?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 20, 2000 | by Timothy W. Maier

New satellite images of Mount Ararat show an anomaly which some say looks like a boat. Insight asked experts to analyze them. Here are the results.

During a routine U.S. Air Force mission over Turkey on June, 17, 1949, cameras captured something strange on the northwest corner of the Western Plateau of Mount Ararat at about 15,500 feet. The excited fliers thought they had stumbled on the ruins of Noah's Ark. According to the Book of Genesis, the first in the Bible, the Ark "came to rest on the mountains of Ararat" after spending 150 days at sea.

Their superiors reviewed the film, wrote a report and filed it under "Ararat Anomaly" where it remained classified as "Secret" for half a century. In 1993, Porcher Taylor began asking hard questions about the file. Taylor is a scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies specializing in satellite intelligence and diplomacy. He also is a professor of law at the University of Richmond Law School and knows how to ask questions.

To Taylor's amazement, this professional scholar discovered that in addition to the 1949 military film footage there also were classified photographs of the anomaly snapped by a U-2 spy plane in 1956, high-resolution images taken by the CIA in 1973 using a KH-9 military remote-sensing satellite and even more sophisticated images obtained by the CIA from flyovers in 1976, 1990 and 1992 by an advanced KH-11 satellite.

Indeed, Taylor found evidence of images of the Mount Ararat Anomaly spanning nearly 50 years -- and all of it classified. After many thwarted attempts to learn why, Taylor filed Freedom of Information Act requests, which also were rejected. That is, until the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington released six photo frames from the 1949 military footage.

To Taylor and others in search of Noah's Ark, the images were stunning -- even though made too far away to determine whether this was a manmade structure or a rock slab. The only way to make sure was either to climb the mountain -- which Ark explorers have attempted over many decades, only to be restricted routinely by the Turkish government -- or to pursue alternative means to obtain images the U.S. government has held under lock and key for 51 years. Until recently, the access to such images was strictly limited.

Now, thanks to government decisions to allow commercial uses of previously classified technologies, high-resolution satellite cameras are finding their way into the private sector for such uses as mapping geological formations that may reveal underground oil reserves, sunken treasure ships or ancient roadways buried under thousands of years of dust.

One of the beneficiaries of this private-sector conversion is Space Imaging, based in Denver. Frustrated in his quest for answers from the U.S. government, Taylor came to Insight with the idea of buying time from Space Imaging, which has the world's only high-resolution, remote-sensing, commercial-satellite cameras capable of shooting images at 1-meter spatial resolution. When the U.S. military and intelligence agencies also denied Insight access to the official images of the Mount Ararat Anomaly, this magazine contracted with Space Imaging to photograph the Western Plateau.

Because so many federal agencies for so long have kept secret whatever is atop Mount Ararat, Insight prepared to report the contents of those satellite photos regardless of what they showed.

Serving as a space-based Indiana Jones, the IKONOS satellite was tasked to explore whatever lay buried under so many centuries of mystery and intrigue. And, just as in the Indiana Jones movies starring Harrison Ford, the Space Imaging/Insight team had a map to help locate what some believe on faith to be the biblical Ark. Ironically, in 1995 a senior Pentagon official had confided to Taylor the then-secret coordinates of the Mount Ararat Anomaly at 39 degrees 42 minutes 10 seconds north longitude and 44 degrees 16 minutes 30 seconds east latitude.

The Space Imaging/Insight team began work in secret to get IKONOS positioned to zoom its supersophisticated lens to within 100 yards of the coordinates Taylor had obtained from military sources. The results, about a half-dozen digital images, proved to be stunning -- with an amazing clarity and definition none dared even hope for when the project started.

IKONOS snapped a series of photos sufficient for analytical purposes, with the best shots taken on Aug. 5, 11 and 30 and Sept. 13. Space Imaging also located in its archives an Oct. 5, 1999 shot of the approximate area, which Taylor purchased for the project. That shot proved significant because it helped identify snow melt as well as shadowing.

Even Ark explorers who have been adamant that the 1949 anomaly is not a man-made structure will be hard-pressed not to be excited at the chance to review the entire IKONOS digital imagery for other areas on the mountain that can be enlarged for further scientific study.

One of the most difficult problems in photographing the Mount Ararat Anomaly was getting a cloud-free picture, as well as enough melt of the snow and ice to expose the anomaly. Space Imaging guarantees 80 percent cloud-free photos, which is why it took four months for IKONOS to obtain the contracted images.