Worms in space – British creatures board Atlantis space shuttle
Microscopic worms taken from Bristol rubbish tip for study in space station labBritain's aspirations to become a spacefaring nation inched a little closer tonight as thousands of microscopic worms boarded the Atlantis space shuttle at Cape Canaveral for a mission to the international space station.The diminutive space travellers are being flown into orbit as part of research that scientists hope will help explain how astronauts build and lose muscle as they circle the Earth.The test subjects, from a rubbish tip in Bristol, will be studied in the weightless confines of the Japanese Kibo laboratory, one of the most recent additions to the $100bn space station. Predecessors of the latest batch of worms made news in 2003 when they survived the Columbia space shuttle disaster. They were discovered in a protective container several weeks after the craft was destroyed during re-entry.Dr Nathaniel Szewczyk, a scientist at the University of Nottingham who...
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