WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, NASA / IMAX
It was the longest successful space flight yet for the worms: six months in low Earth orbit (160–2,000 kilometers, or 100–1,240 miles above the Earth's surface) being fed and cared for entirely by a remotely-operated, automated culture system.
The system, which could allow this common laboratory model to participate in many future far-reaching and unmanned space adventures, automatically transferred some of the animals to fresh liquid culture media each month. The system also filmed the worm’s swimming behavior throughout the journey, meaning the scientists could collect data even if the worms never returned. "Because we had the bad experience with shuttle STS-107, which of course is the shuttle that broke up, we are keen [to] avoid being dependent on getting the worms back," Nathaniel Szewczyk ...
