2024-05-01 02:07:39
Are there spiders on Mars? Esa has published a picture showing countless spots that look like the eight-legged creatures. What’s behind it.
Research has been carried out on Mars for signs of life for decades. Esa has now published an image from the Mars Express space probe showing spider-like patterns at the south pole of the Red Planet. A breakthrough in the study of the celestial body?
No. According to the European Space Agency, the dark objects are not spiders. The formations form when the spring sun hits the layers of carbon dioxide that have been deposited on the planet’s surface during the dark winter months.
The sunlight causes the “carbon dioxide ice at the bottom of the layer to be converted into gas,” which breaks through the ice layers above, according to ESA. In the spring, the gas then flows upwards and brings the dark material to the surface, breaking up the ice layers, which are up to one meter thick.
ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter delivers photo of the ‘spiders’
The escaping gas, which is covered in dark dust, shoots up through the cracks in the ice in the form of high fountains or geysers. It then falls back onto the surface of Mars, leaving dark spots between 45 meters and one kilometer in diameter.
“The same process creates characteristic spider-shaped patterns that are etched under the ice,” says ESA. Another probe, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, has taken a particularly clear image of the spider-like structures, which the space agency has now released.
Structures are located near the “Inca City”
Most of these spider-shaped spots are located near a region of Mars called “Inca City” – also known as Angustus Labyrinthus. With its straight ridges that run at right angles to each other and are a few kilometers long, the place is reminiscent of the Inca city of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes.
According to the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the cause of the formation of these landscape features is still unclear. Researchers suspect that these structures are “narrow, vertical passages of solidified lava, so-called dykes,” writes the DLR.
The Mars Express probe was launched into space in 2003 and has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2004. Your job is to map Mars and study its atmosphere.