{"id":627030,"date":"2026-08-08T12:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/627030\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:18:11","slug":"in-1973-nasa-sent-two-spiders-into-orbit-to-see-whether-they-could-build-webs-without-gravity-and-both-learned-to-adapt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/627030\/","title":{"rendered":"In 1973, NASA sent two spiders into orbit to see whether they could build webs without gravity and both learned to adapt |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"InArabella, a spider from the Skylab 3 experiment, resting on a web in microgravity. Credits – WIkimedia Commons In 1973, two common cross spiders named Arabella and Anita left Earth aboard Skylab, the United States’ first space station, to answer an unusual question: could a spider still build a normal web without gravity to help orient its body? The experiment began with a question from a 17-year-old high school student and became one of Skylab’s most memorable biology experiments.The student was Judith Miles, a 17-year-old from Lexington, Massachusetts, whose proposal was selected from more than 3,400 experiment submissions from high school students nationwide, according to NASA’s own archived materials<\/a> on the mission. Miles wanted to know something nobody had ever actually tested. At the time, scientists understood that spiders used gravity and other sensory cues to orient themselves while building webs, but it was unclear how they would construct those structures in microgravity. Removing that gravitational cue therefore posed a genuine question about whether the behaviour would break down once the spiders were placed in orbit.Two spiders, one bad start, and a real recoveryTwo common cross spiders, scientifically known as Araneus diadematus, were selected for the mission and launched aboard Skylab 3 on July 28, 1973. According to educational materials published by the National Archives<\/a> documenting the mission, Arabella and Anita struggled at first, producing sloppy, disorganised webs as they adjusted to the microgravity environment. That early struggle did not last. By the end of the 59-day mission, both spiders were spinning webs that closely resembled the ones they had built on Earth, suggesting that spiders could adapt their web-building behaviour to a gravity-free environment. NASA’s own reasoning behind the experiment, preserved in the mission’s archived materials, explained that the geometric structure of an orb-weaving spider’s web offers a genuine window into the condition of its central nervous system, meaning the webs themselves worked as a kind of readout for how well each spider’s body was actually coping with an entirely unfamiliar physical environment.\"image<\/p>\n

Judith Miles discussing her Skylab spiderweb experiment. Credits – WIkimedia Commons<\/p>\n

Webs built in space were thinner, but still workedThe finished webs were not identical to the ones Arabella and Anita had spun before their trip. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the spiders in orbit produced silk that was measurably finer than what the same spiders spun under normal gravity back on Earth, even as the overall pattern of each web returned to something close to normal. The experiment showed that the spiders could produce functional webs in microgravity, although the silk and web structure differed in some measurable ways from those produced on Earth. The experiment’s timeline stretched across the entire 59-day Skylab 3 mission, from July 28 to September 25, 1973, with astronauts Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, and Owen Garriott responsible for monitoring the spiders and documenting their progress with still and motion picture cameras throughout the flight.What happened to the spiders, and why the experiment still mattersNeither spider survived to make the trip home. According to the Smithsonian, both Arabella and Anita died aboard Skylab, most likely from dehydration, with Anita passing during the final week of the mission. Despite that outcome, NASA judged the experiment a genuine success; both spiders had demonstrated that they could adapt their web-building behaviour to the unfamiliar conditions of microgravity. Arabella’s and Anita’s remains and the experiment’s original spider enclosure are now preserved at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, part of the National Air and Space Museum’s permanent space science collection. Their flight helped inspire later animal-behaviour experiments in orbit, including spider studies aboard the International Space Station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arabella, a spider from the Skylab 3 experiment, resting on a web in microgravity. Credits – WIkimedia Commons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[264754,18,19,17,10579,1024,133,64982,451,264755],"class_list":["post-627030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-arabella-and-anita","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-microgravity","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-skylab","tag-space","tag-spider-experiment"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117059854164896119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}