Unmasking the Face on Mars has always been an argumentive topic for us scientists and the conspiracy theorists. Is it just a naturally forming landform? Was it created by aliens? No one knows for sure but from our research, it is very unlikely that aliens could have assembled it.

Us scientists here at NASA take our jobs very seriously. We research the outside world for a living and theorists are just taking guesses! Would you rather believe a NASA scientist or a conspiracy theorist's hypothesis of space? As humans, we always choose the craziest scenarios and we assume the worst. It could be something as simple as a landform for all we know.

There is no proof of aliens but there is proof of landforms forming naturally. Yes, the "face" looks like it was made to look that way and yes it is oddly accurate to the face of an egyptian pharoh but this could just be a coincidence. We have very high tech cameras that shoot pictures of mars all the time. The "best" picture of the face from 1796 was taken by a camera with 43 meters per pixel. In 2001, we used a camera with 1.56 meters in each pixel so if there were so called "aliens" that assembled the face, they would have been captured in the shot as well. As a rule of thumb, you can discern things in a digital image 3 times bigger than the pixel size.

What the picture shows is the Martian equivalent of a butte or mesa, which are landforms common around the American West. People sometimes say it reminds them most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho. Another thing that makes the idea of it being a landform likely is that Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho is a lava dome that takes form of an isolated mesa which is about the same height as the Face on Mars so they are both very similar to eachother.

There are a lot of ideas about what the Face could be. We will continue research and further our studies. Until then, believe as you wish but remember, scientists or theorists?