Spiders in Space!
June 17th, 2009 Posted in Spiders & Other Arachnids
Move over, Neil Armstrong! There’s a new astronaut in town.
On January 26th, Josh Byerly, Texas A&M ‘99 Alumni and now NASA mission control voice, informed current students about some of his space sagas.
One senior animal science major named Brittany Hock said she heard a little something about space and spiders.
Byerly confirmed the rumors, saying as a part of an educational experiment by NASA, astronauts weren’t the only things launched in the last space shuttle mission, Endeavour. They were in the company of spiders! And according to Byerly, they weren’t too happy – the spiders, that is.
The problem was they weren’t adjusted to the zero gravity like astronauts do in hours of prepatory training. The poor things initially had difficulty spinning webs. But the next morning, the crew witnessed a spider tear down his shabby web and respin a new, nearly perfect one in its place.
“That spider, within 24 hours, had learned to adapt,” Byerly said. Hock was fascinated. And so was NASA. Space station commander Mike Fincke claimed, “We’re really amazed that the spider could adapt to space so quickly.”
Endeavour lifted off from Florida on November 14, 2008 on a 15-day mission. The spiders remained aboard the space station with plenty of fruit flies and a camera so schoolchildren and flight directors could watch their progress.
Rest easy, spider-haters. One thing spiders won’t adapt to is EcoSMART! The combination of natural oils in these organic pesticides gets them every time!
Alyse Popp
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- Sep 29, 2009: Arachnophobia: Decrease Fear of Spiders in 3 Steps
2 Comments | The First 1,000 to Comment (Starting 12/21/2009) Will Become EcoSMART Product Testers!
By linda ising on Oct 25, 2009
spiders & crickets love my basement. my cat is to busy running after my daughters gineau pig. dog is running after cat & the cat is running from kids. life is very busy in my house so staying away for a long period of time is hard to do, & dont want toxic smell for my children to breath. i would love to be a ecosmart product tester for free. i want to protect my home but dont have the money or resource to do so. my house is over 50 years old so the critters are finding their way in. mosquitos & biting gnats also find us & leave us w/ whelps instead of just a bite mark. i am also not a fan of spiders. i think we get bites at least once a month. i have a infant child so toxic fumes & unknown effects concerns me.the health of my family is important but i cant control all of the situations of health of my family.