text: The first spacecraft to see this landform was NASA's Viking 1 in 1976. Then 18 years later, on April 5, 1998, the MGS flew over Cydonia for the first time. The picture that the MOC was 10 times sharper than the orginal Viking photos. This became very popular at that time in the past. The Face was used in a Hollywood film, appeared in books, magazines, and radio talk shows. These things started all the talk about the face being created by aliens.