{"id":7695,"date":"2026-02-28T19:34:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T19:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=7695"},"modified":"2026-02-28T19:34:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T19:34:23","slug":"nasa-rover-spots-bizarre-spiderwebs-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=7695","title":{"rendered":"NASA rover spots bizarre spiderwebs on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft wp-block-nypost-editor-partner-article-links\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>Maybe David Bowie was right with his spiders from Mars?<\/p>\n<p>Space scientists say they have spotted a hilly landscape that looks like spiderwebs on the Red Planet.<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover has spent six months exploring the site to investigate if they are a clue to the presence of water.<\/p>\n<p>The region features geologic formations called boxwork, low ridges standing roughly 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) tall with sandy hollows in between.<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said: \u201cA hilly landscape that looks like spiderwebs when viewed from orbit holds clues to the history of water on ancient Mars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCrisscrossing the surface for miles, the formations suggest ancient groundwater flowed on this part of the Red Planet later than scientists expected.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover has spent six months exploring Mars, with scientists say they have spotted a hilly landscape that looks like spiderwebs. <span class=\"credit\">NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>\u201cA hilly landscape that looks like spiderwebs when viewed from orbit holds clues to the history of water on ancient Mars,\u201d NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. <span class=\"credit\">NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThis possibility raises new questions about how long microbial life could have survived on Mars billions of years ago, before rivers and lakes dried up and left a freezing desert world behind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To explain the shapes, scientists have proposed that groundwater once flowed through large fractures in the bedrock, leaving behind minerals. <\/p>\n<p>Those minerals then strengthened the areas that became ridges while other portions without mineral reinforcement were eventually hollowed out by wind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeeing boxwork this far up the mountain suggests the groundwater table had to be pretty high,\u201d said Tina Seeger of Rice University in Houston, one of the mission scientists leading the boxwork investigation. \u201cAnd that means the water needed for sustaining life could have lasted much longer than we thought looking from orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The rover also discovered bumpy textures called nodules, a sign of past groundwater that has been seen by Curiosity and during other Mars missions before, but this time were found along a ridge\u2019s walls and at the hollows. <span class=\"credit\">NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The rover also discovered bumpy textures called nodules, an obvious sign of past groundwater that has been spotted many times by Curiosity and other Mars missions. <\/p>\n<p>Unexpectedly, these nodules were not found near the central fractures, but along a ridge\u2019s walls and the hollows between them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can\u2019t quite explain yet why the nodules appear where they do,\u201d Seeger said. \u201cMaybe the ridges were cemented by minerals first, and later episodes of groundwater left nodules around them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/02\/25\/science\/nasa-rover-spots-bizarre-spiderwebs-on-mars\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe David Bowie was right with his spiders from Mars? Space scientists say they have spotted a hilly landscape that looks like spiderwebs on the Red&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}