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The giant spider-like feature in NASA’s Australian satellite image is Spider Crater, an ancient, heavily eroded meteorite-impact structure in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. Its apparent legs are sandstone ridges left standing as softer impact-damaged rocks wore away; the center is an impact-generated central uplift, not a building or artificial installation.
What NASA’s satellite actually saw
NASA’s Earth Observatory identified the feature in its October 13, 2026 Image of the Day. The image was captured on September 20, 2026, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) aboard the NASA-USGS Landsat 9 satellite.
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From orbit, the exposed geology forms an oval depression with a smaller, spider-shaped pattern near its middle. The “legs” are natural ridges. Their pale appearance and radiating arrangement make the feature look engineered when viewed from above, but the pattern is the product of impact damage, uplift and erosion over hundreds of millions of years.
Spider Crater: the dimensions that are easy to confuse
| Feature | Measured size | What the measurement describes | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall impact structure | About 13 by 11 kilometers (8 by 7 miles) | The full oval crater and surrounding depression | NASA Earth Observatory, 2026 |
| Central spider-like portion | About 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across | The radiating ridge pattern visible near the crater’s center | NASA Earth Observatory, 2026 |
| Central dome | Roughly 500 meters (1,640 feet) across | The raised core within the central uplift | NASA Earth Observatory, 2008 |
Those figures refer to nested parts of the same geological structure. The 13-by-11-kilometer measurement is not the size of the spider shape itself, while the 500-meter dome is not the diameter of the entire central pattern.
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Why the crater has “legs”
A large impact briefly compresses and heats the crust, excavating a crater. The floor can then rebound upward, producing a central uplift. At Spider Crater, that rebound created the raised central area from which the radiating ridges developed.
Erosion made the pattern visible. Sandstone ridges that resisted weathering remained as high, light-colored arms, while softer rocks in and around the impact zone were removed. The contrast between durable ridges and eroded low ground gives the uplift its spider-like outline. The legs are therefore landforms, not roads, walls, pipelines or other human structures.
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What is at the center?
The center is the remnant of the crater’s rebound zone. NASA’s earlier description measured the central dome at about 500 meters across; the newer account describes the broader spider-like central portion as about 4 kilometers across. In geological terms, the dome is the core of a much larger central uplift.
There is no evidence in the satellite view of a hidden object, facility or extraterrestrial artifact at the middle. The “mystery” comes from perspective: the uplift’s ridges are steep and bright in sunlight, so their arrangement resembles a giant organism when seen in a satellite image.
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The field evidence that established an impact origin
Spider Crater was not immediately recognized as a meteorite crater. Some early interpretations considered a volcanic origin, because the circular depression and unusual central form can resemble structures made by volcanic activity.
Field investigations found several lines of evidence associated with high-velocity impacts:
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- Shatter cones: cone- or fan-shaped rocks with distinctive grooves. NASA describes these structures as known from meteorite or asteroid impact sites.
- Strongly deformed sedimentary layers: rock strata around the structure record the extreme forces that accompanied the impact.
- Shocked minerals: laboratory analyses of quartz and zircon crystals help reconstruct the pressures and temperatures reached during the event.
Taken together, those observations support an impact origin rather than an ordinary volcanic crater. The satellite image supplies the striking regional view; the diagnosis rests on geology examined on the ground and in the laboratory.
How old is Spider Crater?
The impact cannot be assigned an exact date. NASA Earth Observatory places it broadly between about 900 million and 600 million years ago, an estimate repeated in its 2008 and 2026 descriptions. That interval falls in the late Precambrian, also called the Neoproterozoic.
The wide range matters. It identifies Spider Crater as an ancient structure but does not establish a single impact year. Erosion, later burial and exposure have altered the original crater, so the visible spider pattern is a surviving geological remnant rather than a fresh impact scar.
How the view has changed with different satellites
| Date | Spacecraft and sensor | Image type or role |
|---|---|---|
| August 11, 2000 | NASA Terra’s ASTER | Earlier false-color view of the structure |
| April 1, 2008 | Formosat-2 | High-resolution true-color close-up |
| September 20, 2026 | NASA-USGS Landsat 9 OLI | Image used for NASA Earth Observatory’s October 13, 2026 feature |
These images are observations of the same exposed landform at different resolutions, dates and processing styles. ASTER’s false-color presentation emphasizes contrasts in the terrain, Formosat-2 supplied a closer true-color view, and Landsat 9 provided the current broad image that brought the spider outline back into public attention.
What the image does—and does not—show
- It shows an ancient, eroded impact structure in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
- It shows a central uplift whose resistant sandstone ridges create the apparent legs.
- It does not show a man-made installation or a literal spider-shaped object.
- It cannot determine an exact impact date; the accepted age remains an estimated 900–600 million years ago.
Spider Crater looks mysterious because a satellite compresses a complex three-dimensional landscape into a single overhead pattern. Once the scale is separated—the 13-by-11-kilometer crater, the roughly 4-kilometer central pattern and the approximately 500-meter dome—the image’s “creature” resolves into a textbook example of how an impact can reshape bedrock and how erosion can reveal the result.
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