The Face on mars was a big controversy throughout the 1970's to 2001, and still is a popular topic of conversation. Many people believe NASA was trying to hide an alien artifact by saying it's a land form, and others believe thats all it is, a landformation. NASA has been photographing this for years, trying to figure out exactly what it is, and trying to satisfy the conspiracy theorists. In 1976, they were taking photos of a region of a planet, and discovered this strange formation with the look of a face. NASA continued to research and take photos. After years of photographing and talking, they finally figured it out.

NASA discovered in 1998, that what many people thought was an alien artifact, was actually just a landformation. From the beginning, the NASA workers had two theories. Some scientists thought the Face was an alien artifact, and most thought it was a mesa, which is a natural land formation. The second theory was right, that all it was was a strange land formation and bad camera quality. There are photos that show the 3 pictures they took of the Face. One was in 1976. That was a time where most people thought it was an alien artifact, because it looked most like a face because of the blurry quality. In addition, the next picture from 1998 showed was it really was, just a land formtion. The third, from 2001, proved people who thought it was from aliens wrong. If you examine the photos closely, you can see that there are cracks in the land, that if angled the right way with clouds in the way, can show the illusion of normal face features, like eyes and a mouth. In comparison that to the photo taken in 2001, it is obvious it's nothing more then land.

Before the photo in 2001, people still thought it was an alien artifact. An article stating that, "Meanwhile, defenders of the NASA budget wish there was an ancient civilization on Mars," proves a point. Why would NASA not want there to be aliens on other planets when it would benefit them so positively. If NASA really thought there were aliens, why would they show the photos to the whole world? When the first photo came out, NASA stated, "a huge rock formation . . . which resembles a human head . . . formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose, and mouth. They put out the photo to attract attention to mars with that caption. It explains what the formation is and how it may be mistaken as something other than rocks.

"What the picture actually shows is the Martian equivalent of a butte or mesalandforms common around the American West. It reminds me most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho, says Garvin. Thats a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa about the same height as the Face on Mars. The study was over and they stopped photographing the face once everybody understood what it was. In this paragraph, a scientist explains the mesa and compares it to a landform on earth.

In the end, the Face ends up just being a landformation, though many people hoped it would be a discovery of alien life. The photos proved that it was nothing more then a rock formation. NASA researched to find the land formation and made it clear that they also wanted it to be an alien artifact. All of the conspiracy theorists have been proven wrong, and the mystery has been solved.