NASA Rover’s Weird Mars Discovery Revives Hopes of Finding Life

Mars has always looked dry, cold, and lifeless from the outside. But every new rover discovery makes that simple image harder to accept. NASA’s Curiosity rover has now examined strange rock formations on Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater that look like giant “spiderwebs” spread across the Martian surface.

These formations are not actual webs, and they are not evidence of spiders or visible life. They are geological structures known as boxwork: raised networks of mineral-filled ridges that likely formed when ancient groundwater moved through cracks in Martian rock. Their importance is that they may preserve clues from a time when Mars still had water underground, which could make them valuable in the search for past habitability.