Had we seen both sides of the face, we may not have thought it was a face. The infamous Face on Mars photo has spawn off several theories on what could have. One of the images that was sent, would stir up conspiracy theorists for decades to come.
On July of 1976 the American Viking 1 Orbiter beamed down images of the desolate Martian landscape. In the original Viking image, we did not see the part of the face that was all broken up-we just saw the best side of the face. New Photo Of The ‘Face On Mars’ Finally Answers Questions. The human brain has specialized mechanisms for face recognition, and can easily interpret what it sees as a face. Pareidolia is the tendency of a human observer to interpret a configuration of objects as a human face. However, this notion is not accepted by any Mars scientist, and higher resolution photos of the face taken by the HiRISE cameras of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have shown that it is just an ordinary land-form. One might guess that with better images, the face would look more like a face, but it just looks like a broken up mesa.ĭue to the fact that the first few pictures of the face showed a face like structure due to shadows, fringe theories have arisen that the face (and surrounding mesas) were built by an alien civilization, and that NASA was covering up the evidence. This article has been updated with many pictures that were taken with more advanced cameras then the original image that showed the face. The Face on Mars is an eroded mesa-like landform in the Cydonia region.