Fact Sheet
Face on Mars
Dreams of a grand Martian civilization crumbled to dust when Mars Global Surveyor captured this image of the "face on Mars" in April 1998. The site is an eroded mesa, with rocky outcroppings marking several of the features of the face. Nearby cloud cover softened the daylight, so there were no harsh shadows like those in the famous Viking images from the 1970s. The Global Surveyor image is about 10 times sharper than the best Viking picture from 1976 (inset).
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