The Martian Explosion

This comes from Weird Science-Fantasy's Flying Saucer Report [An EC comic book, December 1954]:

Couple this with Clyde Tombaugh's account of a perceived explosion on Mars (noted here and at the UFO Evidence site, among others).....

In 1949, Tombaugh had also told the Naval missile director at White Sands Missile Range, Commander Robert McLaughlin, that he had seen a bright flash on Mars in August 1941, which he now attributed to an atomic blast (mentioned May 12, 1949, in a letter from McLaughlin to Dr. James van Allen). [3] Tombaugh also noted that the first atomic bomb tested in New Mexico would have lit up the dark side of the Earth like a neon sign and that Mars was coincidentally quite close at the time, the implication apparently being that the atomic test would have been visible from Mars. 

....and we have observations that feed the possibility that a Martian civilization was intact not that long ago but literally annihilated in toto, eliminating the earlier perceived canals and all remnants of a society or civilization -- the bomb bringing this about being a bomb greater in destructive power that anything created or contemplated here, on Earth.

Is that why NASA is so intrigued with The Red Planet?

RR