The
first-ever Monarch butterflies in space have taken flight on the International Space
Station to the delight of astronauts aboard.
Space
station commander Jeff Williams, of NASA, beamed video of the first of several
Monarch butterflies fluttered its gossamer wings in weightlessness last week,
just after the insect emerged from its cocoon and began floating around their
enclosure.
"It is
beautiful," Williams radioed Mission Control. "It's always beautiful to see a
little bit of Earth up here."
The video
showed one adult Monarch butterfly floating gently in microgravity as it opened
and closed its wings to dry them.
"Congratulations
to the experiment team," Williams said.
"They are
very proud parents," Mission Control radioed back. "Glad you finally got the video.
It's a pretty awesome site."
The Monarch
butterflies are the first ever sent to space. They began emerging just days
after several Painted Lady butterflies began emerging from their own cocoons in
a separate enclosure.
The Monarch
and Painted Lady butterflies arrived at the station as catepillars last month on the space
shuttle Atlantis as part of an educational experiment. And while butterfly
larvae have been sent to space before, the colorful insects on the space
station now are the first to successfully go through all phases of their
development — from larva to pupa to adult butterfly — in orbit.
More than 170,000
students between kindergarten and 12th grade and 2,800 teachers are following
the experiment on Earth, where they are comparing the space butterflies'
lifecycle with that of similar insects on the ground. The butterflies also have
their own Twitter page "ButterflySpace" where status updates of their space
mission appear.
At least
one difference between space Monarch butterflies and their terrestrial
counterparts has already been revealed. On Earth, the wings of a newly-emerged
Monarch butterfly can take anywhere between three and five minutes to dry. But
aboard the space station, it took about 15 minutes.
The Monarch
and Painted Butterflies were delivered to the space station inside a habitat
known as the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus Science Insert – 03. It
was built by BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado at
Boulder.
Because of
the cramped quarters, the Monarch butterflies — which began emerging Nov. 30 — were
only expected to live about four days, instead of the two weeks they would
survive on Earth, NASA officials said. The space Painted Lady butterflies,
meanwhile, are expected to live about a week, about half what they would on
Earth.
The
butterflies are not the first critters to live among the human crew of the
International Space Station. Two orb weaving spiders managed to spin
wild webs in weightlessness last year, with astronauts checking in on them
from time to time.
Spider
Success! Weightless Webs Spun in Space
The
Strangest Things in Space
SPACE.com
Video Show - Life Aboard the International Space Station
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