QUICK FACTS

"The picture shows eroded mesa-like landforms. The huge rock formation in the center, which resembles a human head, is formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth. The feature is 1.5 kilometers (one mile) across, with the sun angle at approximately 20 degrees. The speckled appearance of the image is due to bit errors, emphasized by enlargement of the photo. The picture was taken on July 25 from a range of 1873 kilometers (1162 miles)."

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DID YOU KNOW?
Below: The Happy Face Crater. On the first day of the Mapping Phase of the Mars Global Surveyor mission--during the second week of March 1999--MOC was greeted with this view of "Happy Face Crater" (center right) smiling back at the camera from its location on the east side of Argyre Planitia. This crater is officially known as Galle Crater, and it is about 215 kilometers (134 miles) across. The picture was taken by the MOC's red and blue wide angle cameras. The bluish-white tone is caused by wintertime frost.
Like its more famous cousin, the celebrated "face" in the Cydonia region, the Happy Face crater is a natural feature. A nearly circular wall outlines the head and an arc-shaped ridge conveys the appearance of a broad smile.

The Happy Face crater is not a trick of light, it's a trick of geography. The peaks and ridges that form the eyes, nose, and mouth of the face are real. They are visible in photos obtained from different angles and in many different lighting conditions. However, all of the features that contribute to the appearance of a face are completely natural and their arrangement is a result of chance, not design.

THE FACE ON MARS
The Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft took three images of the planet's Cydonia region in April 1998.
One of the three images shows the feature popularly known as the "Face on Mars," at a sharpness of 14.1 feet (4.3 meters) per camera pixel, meaning that the smallest objects that can be seen distinctly in the picture are about the size of a small truck. This resolution is about 10 times sharper than the best of the famous pictures of the "Face" taken by NASA's Viking 1 Mars orbiter in 1976.

As a federal research agency made up of individual scientists and engineers, NASA does not take official "yes/no" positions on matters of scientific inquiry. Most scientists who study Mars believe, on the basis of the Viking data, that the "Face" and other features in the Cydonia region are the result of natural geologic processes. A relatively small number of professionals, however, believe these features may be artificial.

Given public interest in this controversy, NASA planned and successfully executed special observations of Cydonia by MGS during a hiatus in the spacecraft's aerobraking campaign. (This activity gradually reshapes the mission's initial elliptical orbit into a circle using drag from the upper atmosphere of Mars; the aerobraking campaign was slowed to compensate for post-launch damage to one of the spacecraft's solar panels, creating an unanticipated set of opportunities for limited science observations.)

In the view of most planetary scientists, the new MGS images strengthen the conclusion that the Cydonia features have been produced by natural processes. Here is a sample of quotations by well-respected planetary scientists, engineers, and journalists regarding the MGS Cydonia images that reflect the majority viewpoint:

"'The area is geologically very interesting,' says Arden Albee, project scientist [for MGS] at the California Institute of Technology. 'It looks like there were a number of layers of material laid down in the planet's formation with different hardnesses. These layers then eroded, so you get craters that are perched up in the air sort of like on a pedestal. We've seen them elsewhere on Mars.'"

story by Paul Hoversten
USA Today,May 11, 1998, p. 4A

"The 'Face' and neighboring hills in the Cydonia region were revealed to be natural plateaus where resistant cap-rock layers eroded to form elevated plateaus with ridges and valleys that cast intricate shadow patterns."

William K. Hartmann of the
Planetary Science Institute, writing in Astronomy magazine, August 1998, p. 22

"NASA took the first new pictures of the Face in two decades. The result: it doesn't look like a face anymore."

TIMEmagazine, April 20, 1998, p. 71

"...the 'face' is shown to be an eroded hill as scientists expected."

reporter Michael Dornheim
Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine
April 13, 1998, p. 58

Although no special maneuvers are planned, MGS likely will be able to take more images of the region during its primary global mapping mission, which is due to begin in April 1999; a precise projection of when the orbit of MGS will pass over Cydonia during the spacecraft's primary mission will not be available until that timeframe.

Is the Face on Mars a hoax?

That there is a rock formation on Mars that looks somewhat like a face is certainly true, but it is also true there are many similar naturally occurring structures on the Earth, Moon and Mars that resemble faces, animals and even man-made designs.

Links

Mars Global Surveyor
The Face on Mars
Malin Space Science Systems - The Face on Mars