He and the students he mentors had the opportunity to study the effect of space travel on their tiny subjects and to be there for the launch. Although the worms didn't survive the trip, Moss was undaunted. The space trip was only a small diversion along the path of the real journey, which is the study of developmental timing.
Developmental timing is the way in which cellular events occur in a particular order or synchrony.
C. elegans is a perfect model in which to study these events because it is the first animal for which the entire DNA sequence, the sum of all its genes, is known. This simple worm gives us terrific access to how cells behave - it's an experimentalist's dream. It's not so much that we are interested in the worm itself, but it allows us to see how cells make choices about what to do next. If we want to know what is going on in cancer, we have to know what is happening inside normal cells. Currently, we really understand only a fraction of that.