GEORGETOWN - Georgetown High School students are helping astronauts on the International Space Station perform an experiment during their science class this month.

The students in Deanna Schrag and Shawn Tomlin’s science classes are monitoring the development of Monarch caterpillars in their classroom as they develop into butterflies. They will compare their results to those found on an identical experiment being done on the ISS in real time through daily photos and written updates from the astronauts.

Georgetown is one of about 400 high schools in the eastern United States that are participating in the study.

“We’ve watched video tape on metamorphosis and we’ve watched video tape on the development of the Monarch butterfly and what we’ve been doing is just measuring the caterpillars each day,” Tomlin said. “We’re just monitoring their growth right now. I want to disturb them as little as possible and see what they’ll do.”

Retired Colonel Howard Willis, the junior high science teacher, was contacted by Monarch Watch and asked to participate in the program. Willis said several hundred schools responded and Georgetown was one of the schools picked to participate. Monarch Watch works with GHS to help develop their butterfly habitat as part of the school’s Lee Grant outdoor learning center project.

Willis said the ISS is studying the effects of weightlessness on the development of the caterpillars and their metamorphosis. The caterpillars use gravity to determine where to build their chrysalis, among other things, on Earth and the scientists are comparing the development of the caterpillars in space to that of those in the classrooms to see if the lack of gravity will hinder or change their development.

The project is also trying to understand more about how the caterpillars change into butterflies. Willis said it is a strange phenomenon because the butterflies’ DNA shares little resemblance to the DNA of the caterpillar.

“Butterflies go through a complete change in their metamorphosis,” Tomlin said. “The DNA of a butterfly cannot be linked to the DNA of the caterpillar.”

The school received their caterpillars on Nov. 16 along with concentrated milkweed, which is the caterpillars’ main food source and the milk weed is also what makes them poisonous. They have molted once since Nov. 16. Tomlin said the caterpillars will molt and shed their skin five times before they go into their chrysalis. They were in their fourth stage when they arrived.

Tomlin said he will be building a flight cage to release the Monarchs into once the metamorphosis is complete. The weather outside will be too cold for them to fly south at that time so Tomlin said the classes will be observing whether or not the butterflies will be able to complete their life cycle in captivity. To feed the Monarchs once they emerge Willis is growing milk weed in his classroom.

Tomlin said he expects the caterpillars to enter their chrysalis over the Thanksgiving break. They should begin emerging by the end of the first week in December.