text: The Face is a mesa, which is a common land feature on Mars. "Scientists figured it was just another Martian mesa, common enough around Cydonia, only this one had unusual shadows that made it look like an Egyptian Pharaoh (p.2)." The shadows and poor camera quality had made the mesa look like a face. "Although few scientists believed the Face was an alien artifact, photographing Cydonia became a priority for NASA...(p.6)" Though, most scientists didn't believe that it was really an alien artifact they still were going to prove that it wasn't an alien artifact. Photographing Cydonia became a new priotity.