Ever since humans have discovered space and the existence of other planets, the belief that we are not alone in the universe has been a back-and-forth question over the years. It has inspired many works and become a huge part of pop culture. While this can be fun to think about, sometimes people who can't accept the truth take it too far. The Face on Mars is just a natural landfrom because technology wasn't that good in 1976, people (especially conspiracy theorists) take can take things like this too far, and the formation is just like others on Mars and even on Earth.

The original photo of the Face on Mars was taken way back in 1976 by NASA's Viking 1. The spacecraft was only trying to find landing spots for another NASA ship, Viking 2, when the picture was snapped. Technology has evolved vastly over the past few decades, but 1976 was right at the start of this kind of space exploration technology, with the moon landing only happening 7 years prior to this event. When the latest photo of the face was snapped in 2001, its resolution was 10 times sharper than the Viking 1's photo. It showed every crack and bump on the surface of the "face", while the Viking's only showed patches of white while most of it was covered in shadow. Even a Mars Global surveyor photo from 1998 (which was taken with better technology than the Viking 1's) revealed a mesa formation. The photos taken after the original in 1976 definitely show anything but a face, which shows that the Face on Mars was only seen because of developing technology at the time.

Everytime there is a statement made by an organized group like NASA, or a government of any kind, people like to try to disprove these statements and say that they are fake. These people are called conspiracy theorists. They usually jump to conclusions on statements like this all the time with little or no evdidence. Back in the 1960s and '70s, the space race had started, causing many people to believe that we are not alone in this universe of ours. Anytime there was a trace of alien life out there, radios would broadcast about it, new channels would cover it, and sometimes even movies were made about these, just like in the case of the Face on Mars. Since these are people's main sources for news, they believed the claims instantly. When NASA revealed a picture of a supposed 'face on mars', the population went crazy. This was solid proof of ancient alien life on another planet, the conspiratists believed, but alas, the only reason this face appeared was due to technology with not enough resolution to snap a high quality picture of the formation. Conspiratists claimed that alien life on Mars would be something that NASA would "want to hide", but in response to this, defenders of the NASA budget said that "they wished there was an ancient civilization on Mars". If the face was actually alien, NASA never would have come out and told the public of its existence, or at least would've said that it was alien in its reveal. Instead that caption read; "A huge rock formation.. which resembles a human head..." This shows that NASA directly knew that the formation was natural and most definitely not alien.

The Face on Mars was quite the phenomenon, which started out the belief that there was alien life out in space and also on the planets near to Earth. When scientists first saw the formation from the Viking 1, they were suprised to see a face on the screen, but that was only at first. Scientists quickly realized that the face was nothing more than a Martian Mesa. These mesas are very common around Cydonia (the region of Mars in which the photo was taken). These formations are also on other parts of Mars and even here on Earth. Jim Garvin, a cheif scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program stated, "It reminds me most of the Middle Buttle in the Snake River of Idaho." This shows that a formation like a mesa is super easy to indentify, and one on Mars could just as easily be identified with good enough technology, as proven by the Mars Global Survey spacecraft and the Mars global surveyor from 1998, which was even taken through clouds on the red planet. It makes sense for the formation to be a mesa, especially since the fact that there were no other facelike structures like this found on Mars since.

The Face on Mars is a natural landform because the technolgy that took the photo wasn't that great compared to years after, conspiracy theorists can really blow things like this in the worng direction, and the formation of the face resembles structures like that on Mars and Earth. With our knowledge and exploration of space growing every day, it is just a matter of time until we discover alien life somewhere. The problem is, people can get so caught up in these kind of things and overexagerate them to beyond reasoning. Technology has advanced so much in the past few years, so much that we can see every crack and divit on the surface of a planet, so the question is, when will we actually discover a real "Face on Mars"?