Students at Aurora Hills Middle School are "going along for the ride" on the latest space shuttle mission. These students are participating in experiments in their classrooms that are being simultaneously carried out aboard the Endeavor Space Shuttle and International Space Station mission. The experiments follow the complete life cycle of Painted Lady butterflies and the web building activities of the Metapeira orb weaving spiders. The spiders and butterflies are kept in the same controlled environment in both the classroom and onboard the shuttle.

The goal of the experiment is to observe how the microgravity environment affects the spiders and butterflies. Students journal their observations of the animals in their classrooms and compare it to the spiders and butterflies at the space station via an Internet link.

"It is really interesting to learn how being in space can affect life. I am glad that our school got the opportunity to participate in this experiment," Aurora Hills student Jose said.

Twenty other middle schools in Colorado and Texas are doing the same experiments. The Bioserve Technologies at University of Colorado, Boulder, NASA, Butterfly Pavilion, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and Baylor College School of Medicine are also observing butterflies and spiders.

National Space Biomedical Research Institute is funding the project.