NASA images reveal Australia’s ‘giant spider’ is actually an ancient impact crater

From the ground it may look like just another isolated patch of tough Australian country. From space, however, the landscape takes on an uncanny form: a giant spider etched across the earth. Spider Crater, hidden away in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, isn’t just the work of nature’s more familiar forces. It has a strange shape, created by a meteor strike hundreds of millions of years ago. A recent satellite image has brought the amazing formation into sharp focus, revealing how closely its central pattern resembles the creature that gave it its name.A crater etched by the fury of the cosmosAccording to NASA, the Operational Land Imager on the NASA-USGS Landsat 9 satellite acquired the image on September 20, 2026. Seen from above, the whole impact structure is distinctly oval-shaped, measuring about 13 km by 11 km.