Space Spider Anita Died Sept. 16, 1973, During Skylab 3 Mission

Summary: Space spider Anita died Sept. 16, 1973, during Skylab 3 mission, the second manned mission to Skylab, the first United States space station.

common cross spider (Araneus diadematus) Anita, the second spider to spin a web in space; MSFC Skylab Student Project Report (1974), figure 25, page 42: Public Domain, via NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center

Space spider Anita died Sept. 16, 1973, as one of two arachnid participants in an experiment on the effects of weightlessness on web formation conducted in the orbital workshop of the first United States space station, Skylab.

Common cross spiders (Araneus diadematus) Anita and Arabella were launched Saturday, July 28, 1973, at 11:10:50 Coordinated Universal Time (7:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time) from Cape Kennedy (Cape Canaveral since Oct. 9, 1973) in east central Florida. The Apollo command and service module (Apollo CSM) delivered the second manned mission, known as Skylab 3, to the space station.

Skylab 3, designated as SL-3, lasted 59 days 11 hours 9 minutes 1 second. The mission comprised a multi-species crew, under the command of fourth moonwalker Alan LaVern Bean (March 15, 1932-May 26, 2018). The mission marked the first spaceflights for scientist-pilot Owen Kay Garriott (Nov. 22, 1930-April 15, 2019) and mission pilot Jack Robert Lousma (born Feb. 29, 1936).

Three other species also experienced first spaceflights. The animal kingdom’s class Insecta accounted for the most numerous representation in Skylab 3. In addition to Anita and Arabella, the space station’s orbital workshop also boarded 180 fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) pupae. Six of class Mammalia’s little pocket mice (Perognathus longimembris) and two of typological classification pisces’ mummichog minnows (Fundular hereoclitus), along with 50 minnow fish eggs, participated in mission experiments.

Arabella gained recognition as the first spider to spin a web in space. She was ejected from her transportation vial into a specially constructed screened cage Sunday, Aug. 5. The next day, Monday, Aug. 6, the cage’s corners revealed a microgravity-skewered “rudimentary web.” Arabella’s adjustment to weightlessness improved her web formation. Her third web, discovered Wednesday, Aug. 22, was described as “her best to date.”

During Arabella’s sessions in the cage, Anita sheltered in her own transportation vial. On Sunday, Aug. 26, Owen Garriott returned Arabella to the privacy of her vial and relocated Anita to the publicness of the screened cage.

Anita displayed a similar trajectory to Arabella’s arc of improvement from disorientation to orientation in weightlessness. On Sunday, Sept. 16, after three weeks of web spinning, Anita was found dead in the cage. Owen Garriott removed her body and placed the expired space spider in her transportation vial.

The Apollo command and service module undocked from the Skylab space station Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 11:16:42 UTC (7:16 a.m. EDT). Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean happened at 22:19:51 UTC (6:19 p.m. EDT). Recovery was effected 42 minutes after splashdown by the USS New Orleans (LPH-11), a U.S. Navy Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ship.

After recovery, Arabella was found dead in her transportation vial. The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center’s (MSFC) Skylab Student Report stated that examinations revealed “signs of dehydration, the only visible evidence of cause of their demise.”

NASA transferred the remains of Anita and Arabella to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in 1974. According to the museum’s website, Anita is displayed in the Space Science Exhibition in the museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, western Fairfax County, Northern Virginia. Assigned inventory number A19740484000, Anita is enclosed within a plastic, formalin-filled bottle, labeled with her name in capital letters.

The National Air and Space Museum’s website notes Arabella’s display status as “either on loan or in storage.” A photograph reveals her formalin-filled plastic vial as largely black, with a small window near the base for viewing her remains. Her name is captioned with the first letter in uppercase and the remaining letters in lower case.

American space historian Robert Zane Pearlman (born Jan. 14, 1976) noted in his Dec. 3, 2012, post to his website, collectSpace, that Arabella has been loaned for exhibition at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Madison County, north central Alabama. The center hugs the northern edge of the the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal. The army post’s southern grounds host NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center.

The takeaways for space spider Anita, who died Sept. 16, 1973, during the Skylab 3 mission, are that she is remembered as the second spider to spin a web in space and that the last of her three space webs testified to her competent adjustment to the unfamiliar weightlessness of her new environment.

Anita, the second spider to spin a web in space, is displayed in the Space Science Exhibition in the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, western Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017, 16:54: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

common cross spider (Araneus diadematus) Anita, the second spider to spin a web in space; MSFC Skylab Student Project Report (1974), figure 25, page 42: Public Domain, via NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center @ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19740025164.pdf

Anita, the second spider to spin a web in space, is displayed in the Space Science Exhibition in the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, western Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017, 16:54: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spider_Anita.jpg

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