Twenty five years ago NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft took pictures for landing spots for its sister ship, Viking 2. While taking these photos Viking 2 noticed a shadowly likness to a human face. There are some people think it was created by aliens, but research shows it looks like a landform.

When scientist saw the picture they just assumed it was a rock clumb with the shadows causing it to look like an Egyption Pharaoh. When NASA unvieled the picture for the public to see they thought it would be a good idea to put, "huge rock formation... which resembles a human head... formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes,nose, and mouth." They thought it would get more attention towards Mars, and it did. It became such a popular icon it appeared in films, books, magazines, radio talk shows, and check out lines at haunted grocery stores.

Conspiracy theorists say that scientist want to hide evidence that there is life on Mars. Other people say it was an ancient civilization on Mars. Even though only some scientist think its an alien artifact NASA made it their top prority. As they as they could they were going to gdet another photograph of the face. On April 5, 1998 Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia. Michael Malin and his team, MOC, took a picture ten times sharper than the first. The picture reavealed that there was no alien monument at all.

Most people believed this, but not everyone. they figured the coordinents 41 degrees north martian latitude. In April of 1998 it was winter at the time, which is the time of year Mars becomes cloudy. This means the camera on board had to look through wispy clouds, which could hide some of the evidence. Finally on April 8, 2001 they got a clearer view for another picture. They find out that the picture is equivalent to a butte or messa. Garvin sasy it reminds him of the MIddle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho. He says that the lava dome is about the height as the face of mars.

In conclusion the mysterious face was never actaully said to be Alien markings of a pile of Rocks with weird shadows. According to the study the closest thing to have is figuring it out is the pictures. Will we ever find out what the mysterious face is?