14 DAY TRIAL // Spiders aboard the International Space Station appear to have given a new meaning to the term “www,” as they wove their “weird wide webs”. Along with a few individuals of painted lady butterflies, the spiders are involved in a study meant to catch the attention and spark the technology and science-related interest of K-12 students back on Earth. The students are supposed to monitor the changes in the behavior of the insects under zero gravity conditions.
So far, it seems that the lack of gravity doesn't bode well for the arthropods, at least in what concerns their web-spinning activities. Looking at the web, the astronauts aboard the ISS found them weird, three dimensional and very far from the regular, symmetrical results the spiders on Earth generate. "There was no symmetry that was noticeable in it," said NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus, the science officer of the space station, quoted by Space. "The web was more or less three-dimensional and it looked like it was all over the inside of the spider hab," she added. "We took some pictures of it, so hopefully they will turn out."
Other than designing spooky webs, they seem to be just fine, the ISS crew reports. The healthy supply of fruit flies that was provided as a diet was consumed normally, without alterations of the feeding habit. It appears that one of the two spiders has left their dedicated habitat, but the astronauts and the ground technicians are not worried by the event, since they're sure that it could have gone too far and, if something wrong happened to it, there's a back-up spider with its own habitat waiting to be used for scientific purposes.
"We're not missing a spider," claimed Holly Ridings, the space station's flight director. "The way it was explained to me, he came out of his bedroom and may be into the living room of the house." Kirk Shireman, NASA's deputy station program manager agreed with Ridings, "We don't believe that it's escaped the overall payload enclosure. I'm sure we'll find him spinning a web sometime here in the next few days".