When the Viking I orbiter snapped pictures of Mars in 1976, one photo became a hit for its apparent portrayal of a mountainous Martian face resembling an Egyptian pharaoh. Eager to set the record straight on this crowd-pleasing Mars anomaly, NASA used a satellite to re-photograph the region in 1998 and 2001. The high-resolution images revealed a natural geological feature rather than a monument to Martian kind.
As the Viking 1 mission circled the red planet in search of a landing site for its sister ship, Viking 2, it snapped photos of Mars for engineers at NASA to study. On July 25, 1976, it captured the image of a pile of rocks that greatly resembled a human face. When NASA released the photograph almost a week later, they described it as a “huge rock formation in the center which resembled a human head.”
Picture Credit : Google
