NASA had selected soil-dwelling nematodes known as C. elegans to fly on the space shuttle because of their remarkable survival abilities. In ground experiments, for instance, they had adjusted well to being spun in a centrifuge for four days at forces as great as 20 times Earth's gravity. And they are known to combat famine conditions by going dormant.

But the worms outran expectations by surviving the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia during reentry on Feb. 1.

Scientific teams are just beginning to study the saga of the pinhead-size roundworms discovered thriving in their petri dishes last week at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

During their flight, the worms had shared a middeck locker with sensors that recorded the temperature every 28 minutes, NASA payload mission manager Jack Keifenheim said Friday. The highest temperature registered was 80 degrees, he said, but that was "probably while they were sitting in a field in Texas." The catastrophe that killed seven astronauts apparently occurred between readings.

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