Scientists have been trying to figure out what the face is on Mars. It turns out that the face, is not really a face. Scientists discovered that the formation that everyone is seeing in the photograph is actually a landform called a Butte, they are most likely found in the American west.

This formation was so astonishing that it was featured in a Hollywood film, Magazines, Books, radio talk shows and even haunted grocery store checkout lines. People thought that this kind of evidence should be hidden. A few scientists believed that the face was an alien artifact, but phototgraphing Cydonia became a priority for NASA when MGS arrived at the Red Planet in September 1997, they photographed the face as soon as they could get a good shot at it. MGS is a mapping spacecraft that normally looks straight down and scans the planet like a fax machine. Eighteen years later they decided to end the mission, they felt that it was important to taxpayers.

On April 5, 1998, MGS flew across Cydonia for the first time. A team of Mars Orbiters took a picture ten time sharper than the original photo. An enormouse amount of web surfers waited for the pricture, but when it posted they weren't so satisfied. There wasn't and alien monument after all. NASA just does not pass over the face very often.

On April 8, 2001, MGS drew close enough for a second look. They had to roll the spacecraft 25 degrees to center the Face in field of view. The picture showed the Martian equivalent of a butte or messa, which again are landforms common around the american West. It reminds people of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho.

Each of the pictures pixles in 2001 had a span of 1.56 meters compareed to 43 meters per pixle in the best 1972 image. If there were to be objects in the pictuer such as a plain on the ground or Eqyptian style Pyramids you would see them. So after all there is no face on the panet, it is just a landform called a butte.