Welcome to the SPSR:  The Society for Planetary SETI Research

The Society for Planetary SETI Research (SPSR) is an organization of scientists and scholars from a variety of disciplines formed around their common interest in anomalies on planets and their satellites whose origins may be the result of intelligent activity. The focus of SPSR research is primarily the surfaces of Mars and the Moon as revealed by orbiter and lander investigation.

Because they believe the Planetary SETI question is of great potential importance to humanity, SPSR's members donate their research time freely despite the challenges currently posed by the controversial implications of the subject matter. These have included not only lack of research funding but prejudicial barriers to the publication of research papers, difficulties in obtaining access to raw data on a timely basis and a general attitude of ridicule in the halls of mainstream science.
 
Despite these challenges, SPSR is committed to keeping the Mars investigation in particular as  much in the scientific mainstream as possible. To this end, members are encouraged to submit their papers to peer review within the group and to seek publication in appropriate peer-reviewed science journals. Despite the difficulties, SPSR members have succeeded in having a number of peer-reviewed articles published as well as papers presented at professional conferences.

Because SPSR members represent such a broad diversity of interests, areas of expertise, and opinions, the organization as a whole does not generally endorse any particular conclusions drawn by its members, and no claim of endorsement by SPSR as an organization would be appropriate. Some of the position statements by individual members reflect this diversity of viewpoints.
Nevertheless we all agree that anomalous features we have seen in images from Mars convince us that:

• the issue of artificial structures on Mars should be openly debated in the scientific community,
• that mainstream journals should be open to review of qualified technical papers on this subject matter and.,
• that follow-up images to test the predictions of the hypotheses of natural versus artificial origin for these anomalous features should be a priority for the remaining lifetime of the MGS spacecraft and its successors