David Bowie was on to something with his Spiders from Mars. While there are no crawling arachnids in residence on the red planet, there are spectacular landscape features known as “spiders.” NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter peered down from above and captured a captivating view of what’s known as araneiform terrain. Araneiform means “spider-like.”
The image comes from the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on MRO. HiRise is operated by a team based at the University of Arizona. The team highlights noteworthy images from the camera’s extensive archives in a Picture of the Day feature it calls HiPOD. The orbiter snapped the “spiders” crater view in May 2022. The image was the HiPOD on Thursday.
It shows a view into a crater with two notable features. One is the spidery dark formations that resemble a cluster of arachnids crawling over the landscape. The other is the geometric polygon shapes that look a lot like dried mud. “This image was acquired to study the influence of exposure to the sun’s rays on spider versus polygon development in terrain like this,” the HiRise team said.
Enlarge Image
