Face on Mars

 A 1976 Viking 1 photograph of the Face on Mars

Over Thirty five years ago, you might say, something funny happened when NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft was circling the planet of Mars; you see, it was snapping photos of possible landing sites for its sister ship Viking 2 to land in early September of 1976. It did land by the way and operated on the surface of Mars for 1,281 Mars days (3 years, 7 months, 8 days) and was turned off on April 11, 1980 when its batteries failed. 

In any event when Viking I’s orbiter spotted the shadowy likeness of a human face, or what some call an enormous head that’s nearly two miles from end to end that was seemingly be staring back at the cameras from a region of the Red Planet called Cydonia, there was very likely a huge degree of surprise among mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Lab back in Pasadena, California when the face appeared on their monitors. The sensation was short lived though, primarily because they figured it was just another Martian mesa, quite common around the region they called Cydonia, but this one had unusual shadows that made it look kinda like an Egyptian Pharaoh.

Within a few days NASA unveiled the image for everyone to see. The caption on the released image noted: “huge rock formation ... which resembles a human head ... formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth.” Certain folks associated with NASA thought it would be a good way to engage the public and attract more attention to the red planet; after all the Viking projects were the most expensive and ambitious missions ever sent to Mars, with a total cost of roughly 1 Billion US Dollars. So common sense dictates that the mission needed as much publicity from American tax payers as could be dredged up.

Well surprise, surprise it certainly did!

In fact, the “Face on Mars” has since become somewhat the pop icon; it’s been featured in a Hollywood film, appeared in books, magazines, and radio talk shows. The face has haunted grocery store checkout lines for more than 35 years! Some people think the Face is proof positive of life on Mars in days gone by; evidence that NASA would rather hide, according to conspiracy theorists. On the other hand, defenders of the NASA budget probably wish there was evidence of an ancient civilization on Mars.

Unfortunately for NASA a very few scientists indeed, believe the Face is an alien artifact; you see, photographing the Cydonia region became a priority for NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor which arrived on the Red Planet in September of 1997, eighteen long years after the Viking missions ended. “We felt this was important to taxpayers,” explained Jim Garvin, chief scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. “We photographed the Face as soon as we could get a good shot at it.”

So on April 5, 1998, when the Mars Global Surveyor flew over the Cydonia region for the first time, the Mars Orbiter Camera team snapped a picture ten times sharper than the original Viking photos. As you can guess, thousands of anxious web surfers were waiting when the image first appeared on a Jet Propulsion Laboratory web site, revealing: Yep, a natural land formation.  Sadly, there was no alien monument after all as is revealed by the following side-by-side images, taken in April of 1998 and a 2001 photo in dazzling high-resolution:

 

It’s of little surprise that not everyone was satisfied with the 1998 photo. Since the Face on Mars is located at 41 degrees north Martian latitude, where it is winter in April, which is by all accounts a cloudy time of year on the Red Planet; conditions required the camera on board the Mars Global Surveyor to peer through wispy clouds to see the Face.  Naturally, skeptics insisted that the alien markings were hidden by the haze.

So NASA’s mission controllers prepared to look again. “It's not easy to target Cydonia,” according to NASA experts. “In fact, it's hard work,” they said. Mars Global Surveyor is a mapping spacecraft that normally looks straight down and scans the planet kind of like a fax machine in narrow 2.5 km-wide strips. “We just don't pass over the Face very often,” noted a senior NASA spokesman.

Nonetheless, on April 8, 2001 on a cloudless summer day in the region of Cydonia, the Mars Global Surveyor drew close enough for another look. “We had to roll the spacecraft 25 degrees to center the Face in the field of view," said Jim Garvin, chief scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.   The 2001 image is displayed alongside the 1976 and the 1998 images above, you be the judge of the results.

Sources:                                                                                                 http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast24may1/                              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program                                          http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/