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Arachnophobes can rest easy – new ESA satellite images with flocks of black spiders on Mars in reality shows a seasonal phenomenon familiar to the planet.
Dark spindle-shaped formations were noticed in the city of Inca (the southern polar region of Mars) by the Mars Express orbital station and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. In reality, “black spiders” are channels ranging from 45 meters to 1 km in length that appear on the planet during the Martian spring and the melting of frozen carbon dioxide.
Hundreds of black “spiders” spotted by the ESA ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Image: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS
Gas from the lower layers expands and rises, exploding in the upper layers and carrying dark dust – these geysers form a cracked pattern, reminiscent of spiders, before descending. According to ESA, in some places geysers break through ice up to 1 meter thick.
A digital model of the formation of the Inca city on Mars, created using the latest data from the high-resolution stereo camera of the Mars Express satellite. There are traces of black “spiders” visible throughout the image, actually the product of dusty gas geysers. Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
The Inca City, also known as Angustus Labyrinthus, contains quite a few linear ridges that look like ruins – thought to be fossilized sand dunes or the remains of ancient Martian glaciers, which may have left behind high walls of sediment as they retreated.
However, in 2002, the Mars Orbiter discovered that the region is actually part of a circular structure approximately 86 km wide – that is, in fact, an old impact crater, suggesting that the geometric ridges may be magmatic intrusions, which rose through the cracked, heated crust of Mars after being hit by a space rock. The crater then filled with sediment, which has since eroded away, partially revealing igneous formations resembling ancient ruins.
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