The European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft captured new images of small, dark, spider-like shapes traveling through an area of Mars known as the “Inca City” near the red planet’s south pole.
According to the Space website, these shapes were observed by satellites erupting through cracks in the surface of Mars.
The European Space Agency said this phenomenon is related to spring sunlight warming the layers of carbon dioxide deposited in the dark Martian winter.
Then, the carbon dioxide ice in the lower layer turns into a gas, which accumulates and eventually enters the ice above up to one meter thick.
The escaping gas carries dark dust from the ground below to the top, eventually causing the dust to erupt from the upper layers of ice like water from a geyser before settling on the surface.
This creates broken spider clusters 0.03 to 0.6 miles (45 meters to 1 kilometer) wide.
“We are still not sure how the Inca city was formed,” ESA officials said in the statement.
According to Sky News, “It is possible that the sand dunes have turned to stone over time. Materials such as magma or sand could have passed through broken sheets of Martian rock, or the hills could be meandering structures associated with glaciers.”
