Hundreds of worms from a science experiment aboard the space shuttle Columbia have been found alive in the wreckage, NASA said on Wednesday.
The tiny worms, individuals of a species known as C. elegans, were found in debris in Texas several weeks ago.
Technicians sorting through the debris at Kennedy Space Center in Florida didn't open the containers of worms and dead moss cells until this week.
All seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle disintegrated over Texas on 1 February.
Columbia contained almost 60 scientific investigations.
The worms and moss were in the same nine pound (four kilogram) locker in the mid-deck of the space shuttle.
The worms were placed in six canisters, each holding eight petri dishes.
The worms, which are about the size of the tip of a pencil, were part of an experiment testing a new synthetic nutrient solution.
The worms, which have a life cycle of between seven and 10 days, were four or five generations removed from the original worms placed on Columbia in January.
The C. elegans are primitive organisms that share many biological characteristics of humans.
In 1999, C. elegans became the first multicellular organism to have the sequencing of its genome completed.
C. elegans have two sexes: males and hermaphrodites, which are females that produce sperm.
A hermaphrodite worm can self-fertilize for the first 300 or so eggs but later usually prefers to accept sperm from males to produce a larger number of offspring.
The experiment was put together by researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.
The moss, known as Ceratodon, was used to study how gravity affects cell organization.
During Columbia's flight, shuttle commander Rick Husband sprayed the moss with a chemical that destroyed protein fiber.
He also sprayed the moss with formaldehyde to preserve it. Seven of the eight aluminum canisters holding the moss were recovered.
The experiment was put together by an Ames Research Center researcher and Doctor Fred Sack at Ohio State University.
