The Viking spacecraft beamed the potential landing sites back to earth where NASA planners pored over the images to find a landing spot. The Viking 1 was snapping photos of possible landing sites for its companion ship, Viking 2 when it shot what appeared to be a giant head. Approximately 3 km long and 1.5 km wide the face was first photographed on July 25, 1976, when the Viking 1 space probe was in orbit taking pictures. It is located at around the 40.8° N, 9.6° W, that’s 40.8°N of the Martian equator. The Face is a large mountain or mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars. The faithful call it an artificial monument created by Martians as a sign, perhaps a warning, to us or other Aliens. NASA scientists call it merely an interesting rock formation that happens to look like a face. Together with Bat Boy, and Elvis the “Face on Mars” has haunted supermarket checkout Tabloids for years. This image is in the public domain because it was taken by NASA
Picture Taken: Jas the Viking 1 space probe orbited Mars In addition to the stereo view and the selfie, Curiosity took a 360-degree panorama of Mont Mercou and its surroundings with its Mastcam.Photo Summary: A mountain formation on Mars that looks like a face
An anaglyph of the image can be viewed through red-blue glasses, which you can learn to make here. Studying the outcrop from more than one angle helps scientists get a better idea of the 3D geometry of Mount Mercou’s sedimentary layers. By shooting one panorama from about 130 feet (40 meters) away from the outcrop, then rolling to the side and shooting another from the same distance, the rover created a stereoscopic effect similar to those seen in 3D viewfinders. These were combined with 11 images taken by the Mastcam on the mast, or “head,” of the rover on March 16, 2021, the 3,060th Martian day of the mission.Ĭuriosity also provided a pair of panoramas using its Mastcam on March 4, 2021, the 3,049th Martian day of the mission. The selfie is composed of 60 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rover’s robotic arm on March 26, 2021, the 3,070th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Surface missions assign nicknames to landmarks to provide the mission’s team members a common way to refer to rocks, soils, and other geologic features of interest. The team chose Nontron-related nicknames for this part of the Red Planet because Mars orbiters detected nontronite, a type of clay mineral found close to Nontron, in the region. Scientists have long thought this transition might reveal what happened to Mars as it became the desert planet we see today.įrance’s Mont Mercou is located near the village of Nontron in the southeast of the country. This area is at the transition between the “clay-bearing unit” Curiosity is departing and the “sulfate-bearing unit” that’s ahead on Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that the rover has been rolling up since 2014. Curiosity’s drill powderized the sample before trickling it into instruments inside the rover so the science team could get a better understanding of the rock’s composition and what clues it might offer about Mars’ past.