In 1976 NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft was circling around Mars. They were taking photos of Mars to see where Viking 2, the sister ship of Viking 1 could land. As they were taking pictures around Mars they were shocked to see a face on one of the pictures. Scientists didn't take to much consideration aout the face. Thye thought it was just another Martian mesa.

A few days later they released the picture of the face to the world. Since they released the photo it has become a pop icon. It was showed in Hollywood films, books, magazines, and in radio talks. Some people think it the Face is bona flide evidence that NASA would rather hide, say conspiracy theorists. The people thought they were hiding the fact that life may be on Mars.

On April 5, 1998, when Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia for the first time, Michael Malin and his Mars Orbiter Camera took some photos that were ten times sharper then the ones in 1976. As Michael Malin was taking photos, the world was anxious to see what would be the outcome of the photos. When the photos came out on a website it showed a landform. There was really no alien monument after all.

The Face of Mars is located at 41 degrees north martian latitude where it was winter in April 1998. It was a cloudy time of year on the Red planet. Not everyone was satisfied that it was just a landform. Some people say that the alien markings were hidden by all the haze. NASA decided to look aagain at Cydonia in 2001.

On April 8, 2001, a cloudless summer day in Cydonia- Mars Global Surveyor went to take another look at the landform. During that little exibition, Malin's team captured an extraordianry photo using the camera's maximun resolution. Each pixel in 2001 spans 1.5 meters, compared to 43 meters per pixel in the best 1976 Viking photo.

They compared the three photos and came to conclusion that the picture shows the Martian equivalent of a butte or mesa, common landforms around the American West. Garvin said it reminds him most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho. That is a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa, about the same height as the Face on Mars. Some people are dissapointed that it wasn't a alien artifact, but people still have there hopes that it possibly could be one.