The first spacecraft to land on Mars took a disturbing shot, which some claim proves that life lived on the Red Planet.
The prospect of life on another planet is, quite frankly, terrifying.
In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft was photographing Mars to locate a potential landing location for sister ship Viking 2.
On July 20 of that year, the Viking 1 lander snapped the first snapshot from the Martian surface.
It captured the ‘Face of Mars’ five days later, which NASA describes as a’shadowy approximation of a human face’.
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Have a peek for yourself below.
Isn’t it pretty creepy?
According to NASA’s website, the ‘enormous head’ was about two kilometers in length and appeared to be peering back at the cameras from Cydonia, an area of the Red Planet.
Shadows in the photograph over the massive rock structure created the effect of an eye, nose, and mouth. When the shot was revealed a few days later, space enthusiasts were blown away.
NASA believed the image would be ‘a good approach to engage the public and raise attention to Mars’.
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The business explained: “Some individuals believe the Face is genuine evidence of life on Mars – evidence that NASA would prefer to conceal, claim conspiracy theorists. Meanwhile, NASA budget supporters hope there were an old civilization on Mars.
Like most things in life, the reality beneath the facade is somewhat disappointing.
According to NASA’s website, the image’s speckled appearance is due to missing data, known as bit errors, caused by issues in the photographic data transmission from Mars to Earth. Bit mistakes make up a portion of one of the ‘eyes’ and ‘nostrils’ on the worn rock that resembles a human face toward the middle of the image.”
The rocky formation is the Martian equivalent of a butte or mesa, which are frequent landforms in the American West.
Some years later, on April 5, 1998, the Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia for the first time and captured another image in the same location as the Face.
And, on April 8, 2001, the Mars Global Surveyor returned for another look. Using “absolute maximum resolution,” the camera captured an even crisper shot of the butte.
Each pixel in the 2001 photograph measures 1.56 meters, compared to 43 meters in the greatest 1976 Viking photo.
Unfortunately, there was no face in sight, as shown in the photo above.
While there may not be a gigantic rocky face peering down at us from Mars, who is to say that other lifeforms aren’t watching over us right now? We could find out sometime!
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