The image obtained from altimeter data in 2001 looks different than the famous optical image from 1976. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast24may_1/
All I can do with my phone line connection is to view the picture here, which of course doesn't show up with my "quote" ... I'm wondering if I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing...a face like a cat (or similar - yoda?) facing the right side of the screen. This is as opposed to looking straight on. I'd like to click "turn pic clockwise".
You should know that the Face of Mars, for years on the net has been the subject of conjecture---that it was bombed by NASA to hide what it truly is. Proponents believe that the images are different, no matter what angle or factors are put in, because a probe deliberately delivered a strike to deface the artifact. Now, I know about pareidolia. But the Face is not in that category. Mars, the Moon, Mercury, etc all have signs of structures or monuments that can be seen on the net and in books before the net was around. Definitely, they (don't ask me who the way high up people who run everything are, because I can only offer you theories) insert images and ideas along with regular information to program us into eventually accepting that we are not alone (along with many other things). I guess like War of the Worlds, it was a test and we proved once again that we are not ready to accept the fact.
It's gotta be real! I mean, it couldn't be that human pattern recognition makes us see faces in things and we are hard-wired that way. That's way too rational.
There used to be a website where one could take an image based on the more recent altimeter data of the face region and cast light onto it from a particular source angle. The face would be evident for a particular lighting angle, even more so if one reduced the resolution and filtered it to make it similar to the conditions of the image from 1976. With other lighting angles, the altimeter-based image doesn't have the face appearance.
Basing images on altimeter data helps preclude one from injecting subjective-based attributes onto observed structures, such as symmetry and patterns, that could themselves be falsely attributed to activities of intelligent creatures.
Back in the 90s, there was a news article on TV about some company in the U.S. that worked with the military to analyze aerial and satellite images and identify structures that could be artificially produced by human activity, as opposed to ones made by nature. The Face on Mars image from the 70s scored relatively high on the software test that the company had developed, suggesting it might have been artificially produced. The image from the 70s was relatively low resolution, of a particular lighting angle, and filtered by some people, which lent the image to having features that could be construed as symmetric and artificially-produced, even though it was produced by nature. It would be interesting to have that same group run the same software test on an image of the face that is based on the more recent altimeter data with various lighting angles and see how the software rates it as being artificially produced.
The 'smiley face on Mars' crater has relatively high symmetry and would probably score high on a software routine that looks for symmetry and pattern, indicating a relatively high probability that it was artificially produced (even though it's obvious that it was made by nature).