The spiders on the icecaps of Mars

Blooms in spring (left); spiders in summer (right)Illustration: HiRISE, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Dec 30th 2025|1 min read

While the northern hemisphere of Earth makes its way through winter, the southern hemisphere of Mars is reaching the end of spring, and as a result it is blooming, with patches of darkness blossoming under the watchful eyes of orbiting satellites. Discovered in the early 2000s, they are of astrobiological interest because they indicate local conditions that could be more habitable than Mars’s surface is at other times.