25 years ago, a NASA spacecraft called Viking 1 was circling Mars, taking pictures of landing sites that its sister spacecraft, Viking 2, could possibly use. While circling Mars, it snapped a photo of a landform that seemed to look similar to a human face. Thay called it the "Face on Mars", and it became hugely popular, making appearances in movies, books, radio talk shows, and even grocery store checkout lines in the form of magazine covers. Contrary to some popular belief, wasn't anything to do with aliens, and here's why.

The Face on Mars is what you would call the Martian equivalent of a mesa, a natural landform that is common in the American West. The scientists assumed so whenit first appeared on screen, but this particular mesa had shadows that made it look kind of like an Egyption Pharaoh. When releasing the images to the public, the author of the article made it sound like the eighth wonder of the world, trying to attract attention to Mars, and it worked.

The photographs that were first taken of the "Face" were very hazy, and many people believed that there were some sort of alien markings under all the fog. The truth is, they took amazing photos with maximum resolution on April 8th, 2001, and there were no markings, aircrafts, little structures, or pyramids to be seen anywhere. What the picture does show is that the "Face" is, in fact, a kind of butte or mesa on Mars. Jim Garvin, chief scientist for NASA's Mars Eploration program, said it reminded him of "Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho.". So, In conclusion, the "Face on Mars" was just a natural landform that got a bunch of hype in the press.