text: In 1976, the first pictures of the "Face on Mars" was taken by NASA's Viking 1, but a few days later NASA unveiled the image for the world to see and told people it was just a "huge rock formation... which resembles a human head... formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose, and mouth." As of May 24, 2001, NASA revealed "the Face on Mars" is just a mesa. As the pictures were reveiled on the JPL web site "the Face on Mars" was just a natural landform and that there was no alien monument after all. On April 8, 2001, Mallin's team captured a photo using the camera's absolute maximum resoltuion, each pixel in the 2001 photograph spans 1.56 meters compared to the 43 meters per pixel in the best Viking 1 photo in 1976. "If there was an object in this photograph like planes on the ground of Eygptian-style pyramids or even small shacks, you could see what they were!", said Garvin.