All About The Face Of Mars!

Face on Mars:

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory described the “face” on Mars to have human-like features and appearing to have eyes and nostrils in 1976.

Later photographs conclude that the face is no more than a mountain whose facial features depend on sunlight hitting it at the right angle.

Twenty-five years ago NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft was circling the planet Mars, photographing possible landing sites for its sister ship Viking 2.  While taking these pictures, it spotted the shadowy features of a human face on the surface below.  The head was nearly 2 miles from each end and the face on it seemed to be looking back at the cameras.

The area it was seen on the Red Planet is called Cydonia, and the photographs taken there have since become famous around the world.  Common around the area of Cydonia, scientists thought it was just another Martian mesa, but with unusual shadows that made it resemble a face.

NASA released the image a few days later and added the caption “huge rock formation…which resembles a human head…formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth.”  The authors were trying to get the public excited about Mars, and they absolutely did.

The “Face on Mars” has become a world-wide phenomenon appearing in films and books, as well as sparking conspiracy theories and alien enthusiasts to speak their piece.  Many think that this face is the absolute proof that life exists on Mars and believe that NASA was hiding the evidence.

Few scientists however, believe that the face is evidence of aliens, but were excited when photographing Cydonia became a priority for NASA as Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) arrived on the red planet in 1997.  A chief scientist for NASA felt that it was important to taxpayers, and therefore the area was photographed as soon as they could get a good shot.

A photo ten times sharper than the original photo that sparked all the controversy was taken on April 5, 1998 by the Mars Global Surveyor and revealed to thousands of excited web surfers and anxious conspiracy theorists, that the area was indeed a natural landform, and there was no face on the surface of Mars.

Not everyone was satisfied with the evidence however, because the face is located at 41 degrees north latitude and at the time of the photo, it was Martian winter.  The cloudy time of year on the Red Planet, the camera had to peer through hazy clouds to get a shot of the face, and critics argued that this fog could have disguised the alien features.  So, mission controllers prepared to take another look.

The Mars Global Surveyor is a mapping spacecraft that normally looks straight down and scans the planet in 1.6-mile wide strips, so it is not often that it passes by the face.  However, on April 8, 2001 the Mars Global Surveyor passed by for a second look on a cloudless Martian summer day in Cydonia.

An extremely clear photo was captured of the area in absolute maximum resolution, so you could have seen objects as small as airplanes if they had been there, and all that was seen was a simple landform.

Equivalent to a butte or mesa, the picture shows no evidence of the “Face on Mars” that people once thought to be unequivocal evidence that life exists on the rocky Red Planet.

While there will always be people fascinated by this once alien-like face on Mars, scientists and intellectuals alike are now satisfied with the evidence before them and are able to conclude that there is no face on Mars and that the features seen in the photograph taken previously, were an absolute result of shadows cast in a particularly humorous way.

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