Sunlight illuminates the images from the left/lower left. The large 'face' picture covers an area about 3.6 kilometers (2.2 miles) on a side. If present on Mars, objects the size of typical passenger jet airplanes would be distinguishable in an image of this scale. Image shows a remnant massif located in the Cydonia region. The resulting image has a resolution of about 2 meters (6.6 feet) per pixel. The original Face on Mars image taken by NASAs Viking 1 orbiter, in grey scale, on July, 25 1976. The rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system took 142 images upon. On that date at 20:54 UTC (8:54 p.m., Greenwich time zone), the MGS was rolled 24.8° to the left so that it was looking at the 'face' 165 km to the side from a distance of about 450 km. NASA released new images on Wednesday showing a gorgeous panorama of Mars taken by its newly-landed Perseverance rover. Given the popularity of this landform, a new high-resolution view was targeted by pointing the spacecraft off-nadir on April 8, 2001. The feature was subsequently popularized as a potential 'alien artifact' in books, tabloids, radio talk shows, television, and even a major motion picture. Viking orbiter images acquired in 1976 showed that one of thousands of buttes, mesas, ridges, and knobs in the transition zone between the cratered uplands of western Arabia Terra and the low, northern plains of Mars looked somewhat like a human face. On April 8, 2001, the first opportunity since April 1998 arose to turn the spacecraft and point the MOC at the popular 'Face on Mars' feature. It's the first color image ever taken during flight by a rotorcraft on Mars. Image analysis of the original Viking images led a few researchers to suggest that. The Ingenuity helicopter captured this color image of Mars from 16 feet above the planet's surface in April 2021. The Extended Mission began February 1, 2001. The face on Mars is actually a rock formation not created by aliens. Following the lander search activities, a plan to conduct similar off-nadir observations during the MGS Extended Mission was put into place. When the Mars Polar Lander was lost in December 1999, this capability was again employed to search for the missing lander. A few days later, on 31 July 1976, a NASA press. In April 1998, nearly a year before MGS reached its Primary Mission mapping orbit, several tests of the spacecraft's ability to be pointed at specific features was conducted with great success (e.g., Mars Pathfinder landing site, Viking 1 site, and Cydonia landforms). One of these visible remnant massifs became famous as the ‘Face on Mars’ in an image taken on 25 July 1976 by the American Viking 1 Orbiter.

In this orientation, opportunities to hit a specific small feature of interest were in some cases rare, and in other cases non-existent.

Throughout the Primary Mission (March 1999 - January 2001), nearly all MGS operations were conducted with the spacecraft pointing 'nadir'-that is, straight down. A chance to point the spacecraft comes about ten times a week. A key aspect of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Extended Mission is the opportunity to turn the spacecraft and point the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) at specific features of interest.

Image face of mars