As NASA begins closing down its primary shuttle debris collection sites, a surprising and symbolic find has heartened the team tasked with the grim and challenging chore of piecing together the wreckage: worms, packed aboard the shuttle as an experiment, not only survived Columbia's breakup and free-fall, but thrived.

"It's really wonderful," said Terri Lomax, director of NASA's fundamental space biology program at the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters. "We never expected this."

Lomax's research team at Ames Research Center in California received the first samples on Wednesday — pencil-tip sized nematodes that had flown in Petri dishes to test a new synthetic nutrient solution designed to extend the critters' lives.

Evidently it works. The worms, known by their scientific nomenclature as C. elegans, were in their fourth or fifth regeneration since being packed aboard the shuttle for launch on Jan. 16.

"We're going to look at them to see what different life stages they're in, their survival rate and what they're general health is," said Lomax. "They're really amazing."

The worms were added to the shuttle's 60-plus experiment roster shortly before launch, when extra space became available in a middeck locker. The primary purpose of the Biology Research in Canisters experiment, nicknamed BRIC, was to fly moss cells, which also have been recovered, said Kennedy Space Center spokesman Bruce Buckingham.

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