QUESTION:
To satisfy the curious, Pathfinder should have landed near the so-called
Face/Pyramid area. Or is that a hoax?

ANSWER from Rob Manning:
That there is a rock formation on Mars that looks somewhat like a face is
certainly true, but it is also true there are many similar naturally
occurring structures on the Earth, Moon and Mars that resemble faces,
animals and even man-made designs. The best way to see what large geologic
structures exist on Mars is to use the high resolution cameras on board the
recently-launched Mars Global Surveyor. Mars Pathfinder can not be
accurately aimed to any site smaller than a typical US county. We are
specifically targeting the ancient Ares Vallis outflow channel. Fortunately
the channel is big so we will not miss it! This site is ideally suited to
Mars Pathfinder's geologic mission. We believe a huge flood carved that
channel and deposited a large number and variety of rocks from the highland
water source into the flood basin where we intend to land. Our miniature
robotic geologist, the Sojourner Rover, will be able to analyze these
various rock types and give us an idea of how they were formed and about
Mars' early history.

In addition, all of the power for the spacecraft is collected from solar
panels. In order to get maximum power, one of the landing site requirements
was to have the sun be high in the sky. This restricted the landing site to
+/- 20 degrees from the equator of Mars. Cydonia (where the so-called "face"
is located) is at too high of a latitude for the lander to receive adequate
power.

--Rob Manning

ANSWER from Mark Adler on July 21, 1997:
Truth is what we all seek.  In that pursuit, our greatest enemy is our own
deepest desires.  We can always lead ourselves to believe what we want most
to be true, whether or not it is true.  And so we must be the most careful,
the most skeptical about such things.  Among them is the need to not be
alone in the universe.

The selection of a landing site on Mars is a difficult process involving the
many questions about Mars that the mission is trying to answer, and what
equipment it carries to provide those answers.  This particular mission,
Pathfinder with the Sojourner rover, has equipment to tell us about rocks.
And so we selected a site with a wide variety of rocks carried there from
the ancient plains of Mars.  Cydonia would not have offered that variety,
and so would not have made good use of the equipment.  Furthermore, the
landing accuracy of Pathfinder would not have guaranteed, or even given a
good chance of landing within viewing distance of the features in Cydonia
that you are undoubtedly referring to.

On the other hand, the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, currently on its way to
Mars and arriving this Fall, has a very high resolution camera that has the
features in the Cydonia region in its list of targets to image.  While the
ability to point that camera is limited, there is some chance of getting new
images of the region you are interested in at much higher resolution than
Viking.