The Face on Mars

Viking saw a face; later cameras saw a mesa. Believers saw the later cameras blink.

Viking frame 35A72, July 25, 1976: a mesa in Cydonia resembling a face, released by NASA itself with a caption noting the resemblance. Richard Hoagland built a career on it — adding pyramids, a 'city,' and mathematics of the D&M pyramid. Mars Global Surveyor's 1998 and 2001 passes resolved a natural mesa, and the mainstream file closed. The believers' remainder: the later images' angles and processing, the surrounding geometry, and NASA's institutional allergy to the subject. It connects the ancient-builder thread and the pattern of pareidolia doing exactly what pareidolia does — while the archive keeps one drawer open.