BBC:
A colony of
Caenorhabditis elegans survived for six months aboard
the International Space Station, produced 12 generations of
offspring, and have now returned to Earth. The millimeter-long
worms were the subjects of a
study,
by Nathaniel Szewczyk of the University of Nottingham and
colleagues, on physiologic changes caused by low-Earth-orbit
conditions. An automated chamber allowed for remote observation
and kept the worms alive and healthy in a liquid environment
without human intervention. Automated experimental systems like
this one could be used in unmanned expeditions to study the
effects of interplanetary travel on physiology, with the
eventual goal of finding out whether human colonization of
other planets is possible.
