By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

The most unlikely Sesame Street muppet is helping bring awareness to climate change, thanks to the collaboration of ecology classes from Pontiac Township High School and St. Mary’s in Metamora.

Images of Grover hovering over the Earth’s atmosphere have taken over local social media this week, and Paul Ritter, ecology teacher at PTHS, said his and fellow ecology teacher Emily Dawson’s classes went to work to launch their own weather balloon, and one student suggested attaching Grover to the balloon as a point of reference for the footage shot by the Go Pro.

“What we’re going to do is start the process of being able to have our students and their students collect data and monitor climate changing gases,” Ritter said.

The balloon was launched in Pontiac at 11 a.m. Tuesday and returned safely to earth later that day, landing near Watseka.

“What’s awesome about that is when they started talking about Grover, they started talking about the research that was going on. So, very quickly, Grover made climate change and ozone gasses relevant to students and people,” Ritter said.

A video of the filmed footage can be found on the PTHS Facebook page.