The latest images sent back from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), show, once again, that what is claimed by some to be a giant face is nothing more than a ruined mountain.

The latest images sent back from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), show, once again, that what is claimed by some to be a giant face is nothing more than a ruined mountain. But space agency scientists know their work is in vain. Just as with previous pictures of the "face", there are some who will dismiss this latest image as propaganda. "What can you do?" one scientist told BBC News Online, "They're loonytunes." Twenty five years ago something funny happened around Mars. Nasa's Viking 1 spacecraft was circling the planet, snapping photos of possible landing sites for its sister ship Viking 2, when it spotted the shadowy likeness of a human face. There it was: an enormous head nearly three km (two miles) long that seemed to be staring back at the cameras from a region of the Red Planet called Cydonia. A few days later Nasa released the image under the caption "huge rock formation ... which resembles a human head ... formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth." But some believed it really was a face, a deliberately-built structure constructed by some long-gone race of Martians. They even found other artificial structures on the plains of Cydonia left by the ancient civilisation.