I hate to break this news on Christmas Eve, but I can't think of a better time to remember our orbital space pioneers. The International Space Station (ISS) butterflies have died.
You may remember the excitement when the first caterpillars turned into butterfly chrysalis' and you'll probably remember when the first painted lady butterfly emerged to stretch its wings in microgravity for the first time.
Unfortunately, I don't think they perfected the art of flight inside their habitat (although they did flap a bit), but they appeared to live a whole butterfly most of a butterfly life-cycle in space [the butterflies were, in fact, 8-day old caterpillars when they were launched into space].
The space butterfly ISS outreach experiment was organized by BioServe Space Technologies and the University of Colorado for school kids to follow the progress of the orbiting creatures. This experiment offered an unparalleled experience to compare a control (ground-based) group of butterflies with their cousins in space.
Although it's hard to call this a 'successful' conclusion to the experiment, a message posted on the National Space Biomedical Research Institute Facebook page (on Dec. 15) indicates that everything went according to plan:
"The four Painted Lady butterflies on the International Space Station have completed their normal life spans."
In other words: The butterflies died as expected.
Now there's a national student science poster competition (deadline on Feb. 10, 2010) to remember this outreach experiment that hopefully enthralled many young scientist minds.
A great school outreach space project brought to a successful, yet sad, conclusion.
Tags: Animals, Life Science, NASA, Space Station
comments ( )