"Unofficial" Inflight Portrait of Astronaut Spider Arabella

A close-up portrait of Arabella, one of the two Skylab 3 common cross spiders "Araneus diadematus," within the web it had spun in the zero gravity of space aboard the Skylab space station cluster in Earth orbit. This is a photographic reproduction made from a color television transmission aboard Skylab. Arabella and Anita, were housed in an enclosure onto which a motion picture camera and a still camera were attached to record the spiders' attempts to build a web in the weightless environment.

(NASA Photo: S73-34206, taken on August 8, 1973 on 4x5 film)

Back to Spiders in Space