Is the face on Mars the face of a new discovery in our universe? When a face was discovered on Mars, the idea of it was quite controversial. Generally speaking, the face on Mars was just a pop icon, not a sign of life. The face on Mars was proven to be a simple landform because NASA had photographed it from several angles showing all there was needed to determine, there were no signs of any civilization, and the environment was suitable to form buttes or mesas. The Face on Mars was just a pop icon and a skeptic's thought, not a sign of martian life or civilization.

First of all, in 1998 when the Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia to find evidence, when all they found was a natural landform.

The Red Planet was very cloudy that time of year, and theorists believed that the haze was hiding any martian evidence or civilization. However, it is not easy to target Cydonia, because of Mars' natural orbit and the fog and haze Mars receives every so often. So, in 2001, NASA sent the Surveyor back up to Mars to take pictures and investigate.

When the photos were taken, the photos were discerned three times bigger than the pixel size, and no signs of civilization appeared. "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!" Jim Garvin, the chief scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program states. Each pixel in the image taken was around 2 meters, when the Viking image taken in 1976 had fourty-three meters per pixel. In 1976, the theories could have been believable, considering that the images taken did not show very much evidence if any.

Finally, the American West was compared to Mars when the "Face" was labeled as a butte or a mesa. The American West is sultry, gusty, and somewhat similar to what the environment on Mars is. This environment is the perfect environment to form buttes, due to erosion in the soil and the wind pushing the soil around. The landmass on Mars is not exactly a butte, however. This landmass is the Martian equivalent to what the American West has. "It reminds me most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho. That's a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa about the same height as the Face on Mars," says Garvin.

"There hasn't been enough evidence of the Face on Mars to prove it's only a landmass!" There has been several images taken of the Face to prove it is a formation. However, the image taken in 2001 is the most accurate, considering that the pixels are about two meters by two meters. That is about 22 times more accurate than the picture taken in 1976, showing about fourty-three meters each pixel of Cydonia. If there were any evidence to show up on the Face, it would be shown in the 2001 image.

The Face on Mars is only a martian mesa, not a pop icon or a civilization. It is an extraterrestrial butte because NASA had photographed it from several angles showing all there was needed to prove, there were no signs of any civilization when images were taken, and the environment was suitable to form buttes or mesas. All in all, the Face on Mars wasn't a sign of out-of-this-world autotrophs, but it was just a simple bizarre-shaped butte. The Face on Mars was not only a controversy, but a resolved conflict between conspirors and Cydonia-scholars.