On the space station that is currently orbiting our planet, two creatures that are not humans are making their home. No, they're not aliens from another planet. The 8 legged insects are actually spiders, taken to space to see how they live in a zero-gravity environment. Other insects like butterflies have also been put in orbit in the past.
Recently, one of the spiders reportedly went missing from its box, but astronauts aboard the station assured us that the spider had not gotten lost in space. Astronaut Sandy Magnus suggested that the spider is just somewhere else on the ship, and will probably be found in the
next few days, weaving a web in some corner. So for all of you that were hoping to read about the first spider to actually go into outer space alone, you'll have to wait a little longer.
As for how the remaining spider is doing on the space station... According to observers, it has been weaving a web in containment. Unlike webs that are seen here on earth, where the web is generally 2 dimensional, in space the web is 3-D and branches out in all ways of the x, y, and z planes. However, she said that the web doesn't look like much of a thing of beauty, but rather "more of a tangled disorganized-looking web" that isn't so pleasing to look at it. Later this month, hopefully both of the spiders will be returning to Earth, aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Recently, one of the spiders reportedly went missing from its box, but astronauts aboard the station assured us that the spider had not gotten lost in space. Astronaut Sandy Magnus suggested that the spider is just somewhere else on the ship, and will probably be found in the
next few days, weaving a web in some corner. So for all of you that were hoping to read about the first spider to actually go into outer space alone, you'll have to wait a little longer.As for how the remaining spider is doing on the space station... According to observers, it has been weaving a web in containment. Unlike webs that are seen here on earth, where the web is generally 2 dimensional, in space the web is 3-D and branches out in all ways of the x, y, and z planes. However, she said that the web doesn't look like much of a thing of beauty, but rather "more of a tangled disorganized-looking web" that isn't so pleasing to look at it. Later this month, hopefully both of the spiders will be returning to Earth, aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
2 comments:
That is such a cool thing to learn about! Personally I'm extremely scared of spiders but I really enjoyed reading about this!
That's so cool how the spiders have a 3-D look to it. But I'd be scared as well that there are spiders floating around randomly in space.
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