Worms survived Columbia catastrophe

Team member Catharine Conley, a NASA astrobiologist, said nematodes are useful in studying how prolonged spaceflight can affect the ageing process in humans as well as human tolerance for cosmic ray exposure and muscular deterioration from weightlessness.

The team said that when Columbia broke up on February 1, 2003, the canisters plunged from the orbiter at speeds up to 650 mph and hit the ground with an impact 2,295 times the force of earth8217;s gravity.

8216;8216;I can8217;t say I was surprised the worms were alive, because we spin them up to 2,000 Gs in the lab without thinking about it,8217;8217; Conley said. 8216;8216;What surprised me was that the canisters were found.8217;8217; Conley said four of five recovered canisters had at least some live nematodes.

The team said the nematodes8217; survival offered evidence that life could survive re-entry under adverse conditions; earlier research had suggested that simple life forms could endure 8216;8216;ejection8217;8217; from a mother planet. 8216;8216;Transit is the tough one,8217;8217; Conley said. 8216;8216;You could argue that something could survive tens of thousands of years of space travel, but the chances it eventually will hit something hospitable are really minimal.8217;8217;