'Jackie' claims she saw humans walking towards the lander in 1979

Conspiracy theorists have gone wild over a ‘confession’ from a woman who claims to be a former NASA employee that she saw human beings on Mars in 1979.

The woman, called ‘Jackie’, called in to American radio station Coast to Coast AM with the claim - which reignited gossip over a ‘secret space programme’ kept from the general public.

Jackie claims to have seen space-suited humans via a live video feed from Mars - but that the information was covered up by NASA bosses.

View photos Viking 1 and 2 sent back the first data from Mars in the 1970s (Sky News) More

Jackie claimed to have been part of a ‘downstairs’ team working on downlink telemetry from the Viking Lander - the first vehicle to send back images from the surface of Mars.

‘I wonder if you could solve a 27-year-old mystery for me,’ she asked the presenter. ‘That old Viking rover was running around. Then I saw two men in space suits – not the bulky suits we normally used, but they looked protective. They came over the horizon walking to the Viking Explorer.’

Jackie claims that she and six others witnessed the two humans walking on the surface - and rushed upstairs to the main NASA offices, only to have the door closed in their faces.

‘We ran upstairs – but they locked the door, and taped paper over the door so we couldn’t see. My question is – were they our guys?’

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Vikings 1 and 2 landed in 1975 and 1976, and sent back the first data about the Martian surface - including a distinct lack of extraterrestrial life.

NASA says, ‘Although no traces of life were found, Viking found all elements essential to life on Earth -- carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus -- were present on Mars.’

View photos ‘Get your ass to Mars’: Buzz Aldrin wants humans to permanently occupy Mars (TheJournal.ie) More

None of Jackie’s employees have corroborated this story - but UFO sites have talled it with other reports of a ‘secret space programme’ which began when humans landed on Mars in 1968.

Conspiracy theorists believe that this is being kept from the ordinary public for various sinister reasons - and that NASA and other governments are covertly in contact with aliens.

[ Nasa will let you blast your name to Mars ]

Some of these theorists believe that the current Curiosity Rover is a giant hoax - pointing to the vehicle’s shiny solar panels as ‘evidence’ that they are being polished by humans already on Mars.

Nigel Watson, author of the Haynes UFO Investigations Manual, says, ‘These accounts of secret space missions seem to be growing in number and remind me of the infamous Project Serpo.’

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