Even though many people thought that the "Face on Mars" was created by aliens, NASA proves differently. When the ship went pass Cydonia the first time and snapped the "Face Like Photo", they realizied it was only a mesa. They wanted to realse the face to the public to get attention that NASA was discovering new things on different planets. When the public got the photo though, most people thought that it was created by aliens, without any evidence. Even NASA told the people that the shadows were a "huge rock formation. . .which resembles a human head. . .formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose, and mouth", according to the text "Unmasking the Face of Mars". There are some reasons and details that show that NASA was right, it is only a mesa.

When the mesa was released to the public, the "Face on Mars" became a pop icon, inculding in starring in a Hollywood film, appearing in many books, magazines, radio talk shows, and even haunted grocery store checkout lines for 25 years. While all of this was happening though, NASA wished there was an ancient civilization on Mars. When the public started to beleive that NASA was hiding facts about "The Face", NASA went ahead and started to budget the next spacecraft to Mars, the Mars Global Surveyor. When the spacecraft lanched 18 years after the Viking missions ended, the spacecraft first job was to find the "Face like mesa". When the Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia for the first time, they were able to snap a picture of the face like mesa 10x sharper than the Viking did. What they revealed was a natural landform.

Even when the Mars Global Surveyor snapped the natural landform, people weren't satisfied. The Face on Mars was taken during the winter on parts of Earth. Because parts of Earth was in winter during the picture taking, Mars was cloudier than normal. People thought that because of the clouds, important alien like features could of been hiden. When NASA heard about this, they decided to take another spacecraft to Mars in 2001. This time, Mars wasn't cloudy and we had the technology to see little things all the way down to a small shack. There it was proven it was only a mesa that caused all of the problem for NASA. This is all how NASA proved that the "Face" on Mars was only a mesa with weird-like shadows.