While NASA's greatest scientists were working hard in their Jet Propulsion Lab in 1976, an eerie picture appeared on their monitors, as the spacecraft they sent to Mars, the Viking 1, has taken a picture of what looks like an alien-built human face on Mars, though it was actually another basic landform on the red planet. The reason Viking I was taking pictures of Mars was to scope out possible landing sites for its sister ship, the Viking 2. The scientists did realize that this "face" was just another common Martian landform, so when they put the picture up, its caption stated that it was only a rock formation resembling a human head. In order to fully prove to everyone that the Face on Mars was just a landform, they even sent the MGS, or Mars Global Surveyor, to retake pictures of the area presumed to be the face. They even sent it back for another round of retakes thanks to peoples' suspicions of cloudy weather blocking the view of the face! Thanks to many tests and retakes, scientists have proven that the Face on Mars is just another landform.

While Viking 1 was taking pictures on Mars to find a landing site for Viking 2, it snapped a picture of what appeared to be a gigantic face staring at them like a man staring at the stars with binoculars. Although scientists were very surprised when the face appeared on the monitors in their lab, their sensation lasted only a short time. They figured it was only another common Martian mesa with shadows that only resembled a human face. So that they could get enough hey-everyone-check-this-out popularity for the red planet, they made the image of the Face on Mars public, and the NASA scientists gave it the caption noting that it was "a huge rock formation... which resembles a human head... formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose, and mouth." Thanks to this new caption, public attention for Mars, but it ended up dominating people's view on Mars, making them create conspiracy theories rather than convince the truth that it was only another landform on Mars. Despite the people making the Face on Mars a well-known pop icon, it always was and always will be another Martian landform.

In order to prove to the people that the Face on Mars was an ordinary-as-white-paint landform, they sent a new probe, the Martian Global Surveyor, or MGS, to Mars in 1998 to try to retake pictures of the face. The MGS succeeded at its task, as it swayed public opinion away from the idea that the face had to do with alien life existing on Mars at that time. Thousands of looking-forward-to-this web explorers were waiting for the picture to become public, they were also disappointed by the fact that it was a natural landform rather than an exotic alien monument. However, not everyone was satisfied with these results, as they wanted more proof that the face was a face and not a landform thanks to cloudy weather. The MGS did succeed in proving that the Face on Mars was not a face, though more attempts were required to get the idea to everyone.

Not everyone was content with the results of the MGS expedition, wanting to believe that the cloudy weather at the time the picture was taken to be responsible for the lack of the face's visibility. Despite how NASA's chief scientist for their Mars Exploration Program, Jim Garvin, stated that "it's not easy to target Cydonia," the people wanted more retakes. NASA was able to get the MGS to get better shots of the face in April 2001, and they were able to capture a wonderful photo with the camera's maximum resolution, which dominated the Viking 1's resolution by being nearly thiry times better. Thanks to Garvin's reasoning and the high-as-the-sky resolution of the MSG's new pictures, they were able to prove that the face was only the equivalent of a butte or mesa, both of which were common landforms. Thanks to the MSG's multiple trips, they captured enough well-detalied pictures to prove the true identity of the Face of Mars.

The Face of Mars is only an ordinary landform, and it always will be just another ordinary landform. The scientists began with a caption to the original photo stating that it was a landform only resembling a face, then they sent the Mars Global Surveyor out to try to prove that the Face on Mars was a landform. They also later sent the MGS out again during not-cloudy-at-all weather to let everyone know for sure that the face was not a face. All of these efforts combined let people know how the Face on Mars was not a face but only a landform, but there are likely still people out there who belive that the Face on Mars is still some type of alien relic. Despite how popular the conspiracy theories about the Face of Mars being an alien monument, it was only a standard landform the whole time.