Space Spider on the loose

Spider in Space

If this isn't the first twenty minutes of s dodgy sci-fi action film I don't know what is :

First it was a tool bag, now NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station have misplaced an orb-weaver spider.

The bug was taken into space aboard the shuttle Endeavor last week, but was reported missing after crew found its tank empty.

But Nasa managers have insisted that the orb-weaver was not exactly lost, just temporarily misplaced..

“We don’t believe that it’s escaped the overall payload enclosure,” Kirk Shireman, Nasa’s deputy space station programme manager told the Times.

“I’m sure we’ll find him spinning a web sometime here in the next few days."

The spider was one of two orb-weavers taken into space for a three-month research mission.

It was hoped the missing spider might have sought refuge in its neighbour's tank, but the remaining spider has spun a web so thick, to cope with the zero-gravity conditions, that is is impossible to check.