A photo taken by the ESA's Mars Expresser orbiter apparently shows large clusters of black spiders crawling on the surface of the Red Planet.
A photo taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter has set the internet alight after it apparently shows large clusters of black spiders crawling on the surface of the Red Planet’s southern polar region.
As the gas expands out of the ice layers on the surface, the channels can measure 0.03 to 0.6 miles across and form cracked patterns that resemble spiders. The dark spots in this image from ESA’s Mars Express are the telltale sign of ‘spiders’ scattered across the southern polar region of Mars. These small features form when carbon dioxide gas warms up in sunlight and breaks through slabs of overlying ice, etching branched grooves into the surface and dragging dark material up to the surface to form dark blotches.
The Mars Express has revealed a great deal about Mars in the last two decades and counting with its High-Resolution Stereo Camera that is capable of imaging the entire planet in full color, 3D, and with a resolution of about 10 meters.
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