The rumor was initially posted by the Facebook page Space Journey on August 2.
WASHINGTON, DC: A bizarre photo purporting to capture a spider-like rock formation on the Martian surface has recently fueled online theories. While some social media users wondered if the curious structure could point to something beyond mere geology, let’s examine the facts behind the viral post.
Claim: A photo captures a spider-shaped rock formation on Mars
Throughout August 2026, a picture made the rounds online, allegedly showing a rock shaped like a spider on Mars.
The speculation started on the “Space Journey” Facebook page on August 2. The post featured the image alongside a caption stating that the dark, leg-like stone resembled a giant spider, though it attributed the shape to natural geological forces rather than anything extraterrestrial.
The caption accompanying the viral post read: “A strange rock on Mars sparked curiosity after its leg-like shape resembled a giant spider. NASA’s images show it’s an unusual rock formation shaped by natural geological processes—not evidence of life. #Mars #NASA #Space – at Mars.”
From there, the image spread across other platforms, including Reddit, Instagram, and additional Facebook pages, with commentators speculating about a Martian “spider.”
Fact Check: The claim is false
An investigation into the claim reveals it is entirely unfounded. Running the photo through Google Lens yielded no matches on NASA’s official website or within any other trustworthy databases.
Furthermore, web searches across engines like Google, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo using keywords like “Mars spider rock formation” brought up zero legitimate news reports or official documentation regarding the supposed find.
Had NASA’s Curiosity rover genuinely encountered such a striking formation, the space agency almost certainly would have highlighted it, and mainstream news outlets would have covered it. The complete lack of coverage from credible outlets points to its fabrication.
Visual and technical analysis strongly suggests the picture is artificially generated. Meta’s systems flagged several shares of the photo as “AI Content,” indicating the presence of markers typically associated with artificial intelligence generation.
While AI detection tags aren’t infallible on their own, distinct visual anomalies in the photo corroborate this finding. For instance, inconsistencies in lighting are apparent: the purported spider rock casts a clear shadow, yet the nearby rover does not cast one at all—a physical impossibility under a single light source like the sun.
Additionally, the post asserts that NASA’s Curiosity rover took the photograph on Sol 3987. While Curiosity was indeed active on that Martian day, the official image logs from Sol 3987 contain no trace of the alleged arachnid-shaped rock.
Ultimately, the image is not an authentic NASA photograph. The exact creator of this AI-generated hoax remains unidentified.