Did you know on Mars there is a face? Some people think it was created by aliens. Other people think it is just a natural landform on Mars. The face on Mars was first discovered in 1976.

When they first saw it it looked like a "shadowy likeness of a human face". It was an enormous head nearly two miles away from end to end. When they first discovered it they saw it staring back at the cameras from a region of the Red Planet called Cydonia. I am going to be telling you why this is just a natural landform on Mars.

When scientist first saw it in 1976, they thought it was just another Martian mesa which is common around Cydonia. They knew is was some type of landform. A few days later, NASA unvieled the image for all to see. The caption was "huge rock formation which resembles a human head". The only reason they said it was aliens, was to get people's attention. That is exaclty what it did.

Eventually on April 5,1998, Mars Global Surveyor flew over to Cydonia for the first time to check it out. While they were there Michael Malin and his Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team snapped a picture that was ten times sharper than the original photos. When the image first apperared on a JPL web site it revealed it was just a natural landform and there was no alien monument after all. Not everyone was convinced it was just a landform. Many people still thought it had something to do with aliens. But, how could aliens have done it? No one knows.

On April 8,2001 Mars Global Surveyor drew a close enough second look. "We had to roll the spacecraft 25 degrees to center the face in the field of view,"Garvin stated. Malin's team captured an extraordinary photo using the camera's absolute maximum resolution. "As a rule of thumb, you can discern things in a digital image three times bigger than the pixel size", Garvin added. "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!" he added. They could tell there was nothing just the land its self. It could not have been aliens.

What the pictures they actually took show is a Martian equivalent of a butte or mesa landforms common in the American West. "It reminds me most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho", Garvin says. Garvin ended his statement with,"That's a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa about the same height as the Face on Mars."

Coming to a conclusion, the Face on Mars is just a natural landform. Even Garvin, the Mars Global Surveyor said it himself,"What the picture actually shows is the Martian equivlent of a butte or mesa, landforms common around the American West". The Face on Mars is really, just an natural landform.