Five years after the breathtakingly tragic breakup of the space shuttle Columbia, which killed all seven crew members on re-entry, scientists have published research done during that space mission.

Using data on a 400 megabyte Seagate hard drive recovered from the wreckage, scientists have published in the journal Physical Review E research into the way xenon gas flows in microgravity, reports Scientific American. The story includes a photo of the hard drive, which looks as battered as you'd expect.

Lead investigator Robert "Bobby" Berg, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., said of the 20-year research project:

It was a load off my shoulders to finally get it published.

Though much of the data was downloaded from space, the full data set had never been seen until the reinforced commercial hard drive was recovered, reports PC Pro. It's a testament to the abilities of data-recovery company Ontrack.