The face on the moon is just a rock that gives an illusion to the human eye. The face had become popular and eveyone was talking about it. It appeared on Hollywood films, books, magazines, radio talk shows, and even the haunted grocery store for 25 years.

The face is on the planet Mars and other people thought it was a face of an alien of some kind. They thought that because it looked like it had a nose,pair of eyes, and a mouth. The first picture of the face on mars was in 1976 which is called the Viking photo. The second was taken by Mars Global surveyor (MGS) form 1998. Finally, the third image was the latest image from MGS in 2001.

A few scientists believed it was an alien artifact, photographing Cydonia became a priority for NASA when Mars MGS arrived at the Red Planet inseptember 1997, eighteen long years after the Viking missions ended. April 5,1998 MGS flew over Cydonia for the first time. Michael Malin and his Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team snapped a picture ten times sharper than the original Viking photos. Thousands of anxious web surfers were waiting when the image first appeared on a JPL website, revealing a natural landform. There was no alien monument after all.

The Face on Mars is located at 41 degrees north martian latitude where it was winter April '98, a cloudy time of the year on the Red Planet. The camera on board MGS had to peer through wispy clouds to see the Face. Perhaps, said skeptics, alien markings were hidden by haze.

What the picture actually shows is the Martian equivalent of a butte or mesa landforms common around the American West. It reminds Jim Garvin most of Middle Butte in the Snake River. The Face on Mars became very popular and showed on many events like the television, newspaper articles, books, and the checkout area in grocery stores for 25 years.