Spiders spotted on Mars in new photos

A recent image of Mars revealed what appears to be a swarm of spiders crawling across Mars’ surface.

The image was captured by European Space Agency (ESA)’s Mars Express spacecraft near a surface formation known as the Inca City.

According to the press note they are really just small, dark-coloured features that begin to be formed when sunshine falls on carbon dioxide deposited during the planet’s winter months.

“The light causes the carbon dioxide ice at the bottom of the deposits to turn into gas, which eventually bursts through ice that can be up to three feet thick, shooting dust out in geyser-like blasts before settling on the surface,” the space agency said.

They might look tiny from space, but they’re actually fairly large, ESA said.

They could be as small as 145 feet, at their largest, and might be over half a mile wide. Below those large spots, the arachnid-like pattern is carved beneath the carbon dioxide ice, the ESA said.

According to Newsweek, these spider patterns were observed in 2020.

‘The carbon dioxide jet process that forms ‘spiders’ is a completely un-Earthly phenomenon,’ said Dr Meg Schwamb, astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast.

‘The jet process is linked to the Martian seasons and is returning carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.’

Experiments showed that the spider patterns are carved by the direct conversion of dry ice from solid to gas, known as ‘sublimation’.

Such a process occurs on Mars because the planet has an atmosphere comprised mostly of CO2 – around 95 per cent.

On Earth, meanwhile, only about 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere is CO2; instead the majority is made up of nitrogen (78 per cent) and oxygen (20 per cent).