Did Mars Express HRSC take pictures of the so-called ‘face’ in the Cydonia region?
Yes. The Mars Express orbiter was not in a suitable position to collect images of Cydonia area until late in 2004. Until then, Mars Express was able to observe closely only southern latitude features. Planetary scientists are interested in Cydonia because it is part of the boundary between highland and lowland areas. Mars Express did cover this area on 1 April 2004 (orbit 262), 29 December 2004 (orbit 1216), 1 January 2006 (orbit 2533) and 6 April 2006 (orbit 2872), but it was not possible to obtain images of high enough quality due to factors such as the swath width at that location, resulting in poor ground resolution and atmospheric distortion during data acquisition, heavily reducing data quality. The next encounter was on 22 July 2006 (orbit 3253). HRSC parameters were set to get the best possible data quality for nadir and both stereo channels. Luckily, unpredictable atmospheric phenomena such as clouds or dust over the target area did not limit or prevent acquisition of high qua
