When the first photograph of the "Face on Mars" appeared in 1976, researchers and the general public lost their minds. The 'face' was a blurry and shadowy photo from the Viking 1 mission. The photo resembled a human face with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Dispite all of the scientific and theorietical chaos it created, researchers at the National Areonautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovered that the 'face' was just a matian mesa.

Many people, even today, believe that this natural landform is actually an alien monument. This fallacy lead to many studies, researches, and experiments to find out what the face was. One explaination should cool the heated debated is that NASA is a professional institution built to study this very topic. It is also comprised of educated experts that work to learn and discover more for the rest of the population to learn correctly. However, this is not enough for many people to prove only the plausible.

In "Unmasking the Face on Mars," the first portion of the article shows 3 compared photographs. These photographs are all of the 'face,' just in 3 different years. The first photo was taken in 1976, the next was in 1998, and the last one was taken in 2001. Each photo perfectly shows a new piece of the 'face' that was not well understood. The first photo shows what does clearly look like a face in the shadows, but as the photos become more recent, the face receads and becomes what looks like a river, or lava system flowig down the sides. These photographs were taken by separate space missions by none other than NASA. These photos are what fueled the conspiracy theorists theories but only because of the lack of information that they had at the time.

In the article, in paragraph 7, it states that on April 5, 1998, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) had taken the sharpest photo of the time. This photo stood to prove what the NASA researchers were trying to say. The photograph itself proved that there were not alien markings on the 'face' and that it was only a natural landmark. This photo showed that the elements that made up the 'face,' were just "the Martian Equivalent of a butte or mesa." (12) It showed small elevated spots on the surface that, from afar and in the shadows, a human-like face appeared around all of it.

However, for some headstrong citizens, this still was not enough to prove what the photo really showed. This lead to the 2001 MGS mission to capture yet another, improved photo of the surface of Mars. The team that which took the photo prided themselves on taking the "extraordinary photo with the camera's absolute maximum resolution." (10) In paragraph 10 of the article, it explains that in 2001, the resolution of the photo (1.56 meters per pixel) was beyond fantastic compared to the resolution of the 1976 photo (43 meters per pixel). This comparison is enough to show that in 2001, the landmark could be seen very clearly with the human eye and could be clearly made out as just a landform. The photo was clearly just a bit o' rock jutting out of the surface of Mars.

The 1976 controversy over the "Face on Mars" was truely a very heated debate. Starting in 1976 when a blurry image of a face on Mars made it's way through the minds of the Americans, the "Face on Mars" was concieved to be an alien relic of some sort. Years later, a new photograph produced by NASA in 1998 began to settle long held debates over the face. It proved to many researchers that this startling human like face was only a natural landmark with a coincedental shape and shadow. This did not, however, settle all of the disputes amongst the ammeture conspiracy theorists. To further prove the point, NASA pushed it's limits in 2001 and took an amazingly sharp photo of the land mark. The photo was pure proof to the nation that the fantisized face was only a small mesa on the surface of Mars. Even today some theorists still try to hold their ground in their thoughts, but it will always be known to science as just a martian mesa that caused some commotion.