Astronaut Spider Arabella and Her Web

A close-up view of Arabella, one of the two Skylab 3 common cross spiders "aranous diadematus," and the web it had spun in the zero gravity of space aboard the Skylab space station cluster in Earth orbit. During the 59 day Skylab 3 mission the two spiders Arabella and Anita, were housed in an enclosure onto which a motion picture and still camera were attached to record the spiders' attempts to build a web in the weightless environment.

(NASA Photo: SL3-108-1307, taken on August 16, 1973 on 70 mm film)

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