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In 1976, the Viking 1 spacecraft was orbiting the planet of Mars, and it was taking new pictures for all of mankind to see. As it was passing over a strip of Mars called Cydonia, it snapped a picture that would cause an uproar in space exploration. This new picture showed what seemed to be a human face. A few days later NASA reveled these pictures for the world to see; it was an instant hit. Conspiracy theorist were fast to make speculations that this was ancient alien architecture or something of the sort. But NASA said that the face was just a geograghical coincidence, and there is no alien stucture on Mars.

One reason that consiracy theorist could beleive that this could be an alien stucture is that the resolution of the first picture was very low. In paragraph 10 it says," ...43 meters per pixel in the best 1976 Viking photo." This shows that the photo didn't give very compelling evidence that there was life on Mars. soon later NASA and their supporters claimed that this face is just an act of nature is because of the 1998 Global Surveyor spacecraft. This new spaceship passed over the red planet to take pictures of the "face on Mars". The pictures were ten times better than the last pictures of Cydonia this time. The new photos clearly showed a landform on Mars and not a man.

But even after these new pictures conspiracy theorist were still bent on the idea that NASA was trying to cover something up. In spite of the new pictures people said that the day the photo was taken, it was cloudy. Therefor the photos couldn't be very accurate. In fact, these theorists were right. The day the photo was taken was in winter. It says in paragraph 8 that, " ... it was winter in April '98- a cloudy time of year on the Red Planet." These facts show that the landmass could indead be hidden by clouds. However, NASA still supported their claim that it was just a misinterpreted natural landform.

While NASA never spoke negatively about the theory, they set out again to prove it wrong. on April 8, 2001, the Mars Global Surveyor came over the face on Mars, and it took photos with a resolution of 1.56 meters per pixel; the highest ever yet. What these pictures showed was what would be a butte or a mesa on Earth. These landforms are very common in Cydonia, so the pictures were very realistic. With very high resolutioned photos, it is hard for conspiracy theorists to still say that there is face on Mars. It even says in paragraph 11," So if there were objects in this picture like airplanes on the ground or Egyptian-style pyramids or even small shacks, you could see what they were!"

In conclusion, the face on mars is supported and not supported. NASA has proven with photographic evidence that it is just a natural occurance while conspiracy theorists say that it is a martian civilization. I think that NASA's facts are very believable, and they have the science to back up their claim. I hope that in the future, more people will base their beleifs off of science and not fictional conspiracy theories.

Score: 5