Most people find it hard to get excited about analysing martian soil samples as they don't really understand the relevance, but a great mystery to be solved is a compelling attraction and something people can easily relate to. One the other hand, this saga did fuel a lot of public interest in the Mars missions.
On one hand the public appetite for mystery and conspiracy theories was a distraction from more lofty scientific goals. "You'd come home from a sensational scientific meeting about new spacecraft findings, Martian meteorites, and possible discovery of fossil microbes, then go to a cocktail party where, once they found out that you studied Mars, all that the people wanted to hear about was the Face on Mars." Hartman said in his excellent book A Traveler's Guide to Mars: Scientists complained bitterly about the media popularity of the face theory whilst genuine discoveries went unreported. It is interesting to ponder the effects of this saga on the genuine scientific goals of the space programme. However, since there is no news value or money to be made announcing "Natural Feature Found on Mars!", popular media pushed the intrigue angle and the mythology blossomed. Even in the 1970s scientists were well aware of the geology of the Cydonia region and had no doubt the face was a natural feature.
The Face on Mars is a classic example of media-driven misperception. As you can see, there are numerous similar land features to the "face". Credit: Jim Garvin (NASA) and Jim Frawley (Herring Bay Geophysics).īelow: The area the photo was taken in, known as Cydonia.
Further 3D models added even more evidence that the face effect was a fluke.īelow: A computer-generated 3D perspective view of the face using laser altimeter data from MOLA (April 8, 2001). The clearest photo yet was taken and left absolutely no doubt about the natural structure of this feature. They got it in April 2001 when MGS was directly over the face site. The conspiracy theorists weren't satisfied and wanted more proof. Mesas are quite common on Mars and appear in many places on Earth as well.ĭue to mission constraints the 1998 photo was taken on a angle and wasn't perfect quality. Specifically, the face is a mesa - an isolated, relatively flat-topped hill or mountain. The face was shown to be a natural feature. However the photo was taken in 1998 and the mystery was solved. This much-anticipated event put a lot of pressure on NASA - so much so that it actually had an adverse impact on the mission (2). With its high-resolution camera it was able to photograph the face site in far greater detail. The Solutionįinally, In 1997, Mars was visited by a successful NASA orbiter called Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). Conspiracy theorists interpreted this as further evidence of a cover-up. This mission was lost when a fuel-line ruptured on approach to Mars. Yet another blow came in the early 1990s when NASA launched the Mars Observer mission to take detailed photos of the martian surface. Conspiracy theorists argued that this turn of events was more about the secret of Mars than budget constraints. NASA faced massive budget cuts and and it was to be a long wait before the red planet would be visited again. To compound the problem, political support for Mars missions had dried up after Viking (1). The theory gained momentum throughout the 1980s and 1990s with a proliferation of articles, television documentaries and websites devoted to the subject. This helped spawn a conspiracy theory that NASA was trying to cover up some startling discovery. Official papers were rare and NASA didn't show any signs of wanting to investigate further. Others claimed that the surrounding terrain contained more mysterious features, including geometric patterns and additional monuments.Īt the same time, conventional scientists seemed unusually quiet about the whole thing. Many people claimed to see further details in the face such as a hairstyle. Theories abounded, from ancient human space-traveling civilizations to monuments constructed by aliens. How did it get there? What could this mean? The photo, shown right, does look remarkably like a human face the size of a small mountain (it's about 3km from top to bottom). It was the mysterious "Face on Mars", and it sparked a frenzy of speculation which was to last two decades. The orbiting probe took many photos of the planet's surface, but there was one particular photo which caught the public's attention like no other. In 1976 the NASA Viking 1 robotic spacecraft arrived at Mars. The Face on Mars The Photo that Started a Frenzy
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