Mars has a way of playing tricks on us. We've been staring at the Red Planet through telescopes and grainy satellite feeds for decades, but nothing sparked the collective human imagination quite like a specific patch of rugged terrain in the northern hemisphere. I’m talking about the Cydonia region on Mars. It's a place where geology and mythology collided in 1976, creating a decade-spanning obsession that NASA didn't see coming.
Honestly, it’s just a transition zone. Geologically, Cydonia Mensae is located between the cratered highlands of the south and the smooth, lower plains of the north. But for the public, it became the site of "The Face."
The 1976 Viking 1 Photo That Changed Everything
When the Viking 1 orbiter was circling the planet looking for a landing site for Viking 2, it snapped an image labeled 35A72. It was low-res. It was noisy. And right there, in the middle of a mesa, was a human face. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a hairstyle that looked suspiciously like a Pharaoh's headdress.
NASA released the image with a caption noting it looked like a face but was just a trick of light and shadow. They were right. But people didn't care.
The "Face on Mars" became a cultural phenomenon. It wasn't just some fringe theory; it was on the cover of tabloids and featured in movies like Mission to Mars. Scientists like Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, two computer scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center, actually did some of the early, serious digital processing on these images. They found a second image taken at a different sun angle—frame 70A13—which they claimed still showed the facial features. This wasn't just "crazy talk" back then; it was a legitimate question of: "Wait, are we seeing what we think we're seeing?"
It’s All Pareidolia (But That Doesn't Make It Boring)
Our brains are hardwired for pareidolia. It’s the same reason you see a dragon in a cloud or Jesus on a piece of burnt toast. We evolved to recognize faces in the grass to avoid predators. When we saw a symmetrical pile of rocks on Mars, our lizard brains screamed, "Human!"
In 1998, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) finally arrived to settle the score. It had a much better camera, the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC).
When MGS flew over Cydonia, the images were 10 times sharper. The "Face" disappeared. What we actually saw was a normal, albeit weathered, mesa. The "eyes" were just shadows in the pits. The "mouth" was a ridge. The "headdress" was just the natural slope of a decaying mountain.
What the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Taught Us
Fast forward to 2007. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) used its HiRISE camera to take photos so detailed you could see a coffee table on the surface. These images of Cydonia show a landscape ravaged by time and wind. We’re talking about "knobby terrain" and mesas that have been eroding for billions of years.
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Cydonia isn't just a graveyard of conspiracy theories. It's a goldmine for understanding the "shoreline" of a possible ancient Martian ocean. Some researchers, like James L. Erjavec, have looked at the distribution of these mesas and argued they represent a complex history of mass wasting—basically huge landslides—and glacial activity.
The "City" and the "Pyramids"
The Face wasn't alone. Near it sits the "D&M Pyramid" (named after DiPietro and Molenaar). It’s a massive five-sided structure. Proponents of the "Artificiality Hypothesis," like Richard Hoagland, argued that the geometric alignment between the Face, the Pyramid, and a nearby "City" of smaller mounds couldn't be natural.
Hoagland’s work is highly controversial and generally rejected by the mainstream scientific community. Why? Because geometry is everywhere in nature. Look at a salt crystal or a basalt column. Nature loves a straight line if the cooling or erosive conditions are right.
In Cydonia, the "pyramids" are likely the result of wind-polishing (ventifacts) and tectonic fracturing. When you have rocks of different hardness, the wind carves away the soft stuff and leaves behind sharp, angular edges. It's alien, sure. But it's not architecture.
Why Geologists Actually Care About Cydonia
Strip away the aliens, and Cydonia is still fascinating. It’s a "fretted" terrain. This means it’s a place where the crust is breaking apart.
- Erosion Cycles: The mesas show layers. These layers tell us about the climate of Mars three billion years ago.
- Water Ice: Many scientists believe there is still ice trapped beneath the debris aprons at the base of these mesas.
- The Dichotomy Boundary: Cydonia sits right on the line between the highlands and the lowlands. Studying this helps us understand why the northern half of Mars is so much lower and smoother than the south. Was it a giant impact? An ancient sea?
The region is a mess of grabens (sunken blocks of crust) and mass wasting. If you were standing there, you wouldn't see a city. You'd see a crumbling, dusty wasteland of red rock, towering mesas, and vast, empty plains.
Moving Past the Myth
The Cydonia region on Mars taught NASA a valuable lesson in public relations. It showed that the public is desperate for a connection to the cosmos. While the "Face" turned out to be a pile of rocks, that pile of rocks inspired a generation of planetary scientists. They wanted to go to Mars to prove it was a face; they stayed because they found a world that was even more complex than they imagined.
We now have rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance in other regions, but Cydonia remains a touchstone. It represents the transition from the "Mars of science fiction" to the "Mars of reality."
Exploring Cydonia Yourself
You don't need a PhD to look at this stuff.
- Google Mars: Seriously. Open Google Earth and switch to the Mars view. You can fly right over the Cydonia coordinates: 40.75° North, 9.46° West.
- HiRISE Image Catalog: Go to the University of Arizona’s HiRISE website. Search for "Cydonia." You can download TIF files that are gigabytes in size. You'll see every crack, pebble, and sand dune.
- Compare the Eras: Look at the 1976 Viking photo next to the 2007 MRO photo. It’s a masterclass in how technology changes our perception of truth.
Take Action: How to Follow the Real Mars Discovery
If you're still fascinated by the Cydonia region on Mars, your next move shouldn't be hunting for more "faces." Instead, look into the Mars Sample Return mission. While we have incredible photos of Cydonia, we don't have a single pebble from that region in a lab on Earth.
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- Follow the NASA Perseverance updates to see how we are currently collecting samples that will eventually tell us if life ever existed on the planet.
- Check out the JMARS (Java Mission-related Analysis and Visualization Tool). It’s free software used by NASA scientists. You can layer different data sets—topography, mineralogy, and high-res imagery—over the Cydonia region yourself.
- Look for "Active Pit Gaps" in recent imagery. There’s a lot of current research into cave entrances on Mars. Cydonia’s proximity to the volcanic regions makes it a prime spot for future explorers to look for underground shelters.
The real mystery of Cydonia isn't who built the face. It's what the rocks can tell us about whether we're truly alone in the solar system. The "Face" is gone, but the science is just getting started.