In 1998, NASA flew crickets on Neurolab to study how spaceflight affects developing nervous systems; across the 16-day mission, they joined about 2,000 animals in space

On April 17, 1998, space shuttle Columbia took off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center with a crew of seven people and some very special passengers. Onboard Spacelab were 2,000 animals, including rats, mice, snails, fish and crickets, making Neurolab one of the largest collections of living organisms ever sent into space, according to NASA's official mission archive. This 16-day mission, STS-90, focused on one question: how does spaceflight affect the developing brain and nervous system?

Why crickets made the cut