I was looking for updates on the caterpillars in space, and I found out that last year at this time, there were spiders in space.


I also found a video of painted lady caterpillars that went up in space last year as well, with the same apparent experiment: to see if they could go through a normal metamorphosis in micro gravity. I haven't found out the outcome of last year's experiment yet, but I wonder why they are repeating it this year. Surely there must be lots of other simple experiments that students and scientists would like to try. Considering how rare and costly these space missions are, they should be doing as many as they can before the shuttles are grounded permanently.