The little probe that roved caused millions to view pictures of it from the Internet. President Clinton spoke of organic life on it. We are a civilization intrigued by exploration of it. We make one movie after another about it. The Red Planet is such a fascinating planet to us.
Humans are curious to determine if there is life, water, or some remnant of our past there.
Millions of miles from planet Earth, we write about Mars in our music, science fiction literature and movies, scientific journals. To some extent it invades us mystically and religiously. An enormous head nearly two miles from end to end seemed to be staring back at the cameras of the 1976 space probe. The image served to reinforce the human connection to Mars over the past twenty-five years. The pictures sparked intensive discussion of Cydonia.