Saying 'Godspeed' to a Spidernaut: Eight-Legged Nefertiti Spent 100 Days On International Space Station

Dec. 13, 2012 — "You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that." -- E.B. White,Charlotte's Web

Nefertiti didn't spin a web like Charlotte; her kind never could. But the red-back jumping spider earned a classy nickname, Spidernaut, as well as a bunk at the popular Insect Zoo of the National Museum of History of Washington for her out-of-this-world exploits.

Her move to the nation's capital in late November followed a 100-day mission aboard the International Space Station. There Nefertiti demonstrated that, like humans, her eight-legged species can adapt to the microgravity of space, then transition back to life on Earth.

On Dec. 3 the museum discovered that Nefertiti had died of natural causes. She lived for 10 months. Her species, Phidippus johnsoni, usually lives for one year.

Amr Mohammed of Alexandria, Egypt, proposed Neferiti's trip to the 250-mile-high station. The spider's trip is inspiring future generations of space explorers and scientists. Mohammed's proposal was one of two winning entries in the 2011 global YouTube SpaceLab contest. More than 2,000 students, ages 14 to 18, competed for the opportunity to fly an experiment to the space station based on two-minute YouTube videos explaining their research proposals.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121213205206.htm