Animals in space mice, rats, frogs, newts, fruit flies, snails, carp, medaka, oyster toadfish, sea urchins, swordtail fish, gypsy moth eggs, stick insect eggs, brine shrimp ("Artemia salina"), quail eggs, and jellyfish aboard Space Shuttles. The last flight of "Columbia" in 2003 carried silkworms, garden orb spiders, carpenter bees, harvester ants, and Japanese killifish (medaka). Nematodes ("C. elegans") from one experiment were found still alive in the debris after the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster. "C. elegans" are also part of experiments aboard the International Space Station as well as research using quail eggs. Earlier shuttle missions included grade school, junior high and high
Space Shuttle cost around $450 million. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. has estimated that the Space Shuttle program cost about US$170 billion (2008 dollars) through early 2008; the average cost per flight was about US$1.5 billion. Two missions were paid for by Germany, Spacelab D1 and D2 (D for "Deutschland") with a payload control center in Oberpfaffenhofen. D1 was the first time that control of a manned STS mission payload was not in U.S. hands. At times, the orbiter itself was referred to as the Space Shuttle. This was not technically correct as the "Space Shuttle" was the combination of the orbiter, the