exploration / 2026-10-15

Australia’s Spider Crater Invites a Journey Into Deep Time

A newly featured Landsat image reveals pale ridges in Western Australia’s Kimberley, where field evidence helps explain an ancient impact and its enduring shape.

Landsat 9 image of pale sandstone ridges radiating from the central uplift of Spider Crater in Western Australia’s Kimberley, captured September 20, 2026. — NASA Earth Observatory / Michala Garrison, using U.S. Geological Survey Landsat data. September 20, 2026. · Editorial and informational reuse permitted under NASA Images and Media Guidelines — https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/ . No NASA endorsement implied.

Across the ochre landscape of Western Australia’s Kimberley, pale ridges spread from a central knot. From orbit, the pattern resembles a spider. Its apparent legs are rock, and the story they preserve reaches back hundreds of millions of years.

NASA Earth Observatory featured Spider Crater on October 13, 2026, using a Landsat 9 image captured September 20. This is a fresh view of a long-studied place, rather than a newly discovered crater. The full structure measures roughly 13 by 11 kilometres.

The ridges make sense as surviving parts of a central uplift: rock raised as the ground rebounded after an impact, then reshaped by erosion. Western University’s Impact Earth database lists a broad age range of 580 million to 900 million years, based on erosional and stratigraphic constraints, and flags the maximum age as poorly constrained. A precise-looking landscape need not yield a precise age.

Fieldwork supplies evidence that a satellite image alone cannot. In a 2013 conference paper, geologists Thomas Kenkmann and Michael Poelchau described a survey of the central uplift undertaken in 2007. They documented shatter cones and shock features in rock samples, evidence supporting an impact origin. Their analysis also explored the structure’s asymmetry, while noting that more modelling was needed to resolve aspects of its formation.

That combination of scales is part of the fascination. The orbital view reveals a pattern kilometres across; the samples record changes within individual minerals. Neither replaces the other. Together they help turn an arresting shape into a testable account of how a landscape formed.

Respect for the place belongs in that account too. The 2013 researchers described restricted access associated with the Mount Barnett pastoral lease and Aboriginal homeland. Their paper is historical information, not current permission to enter. Anyone considering travel should seek present-day guidance and authorization from the relevant landholders and Traditional Owners, and leave rocks and cultural places undisturbed.

For now, the image offers a low-impact way to explore. Follow one pale ridge toward the centre, then look outward to the wider terrain. The invitation is to notice both what the land reveals and what remains unresolved—a landscape with a dramatic history that careful observation is still helping scientists read.

Sources

Original reporting synthesis by The Raines Foundation, based on the sources above.