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T here may be dehydrated life on the moon. In April, a lunar lander carrying tiny and exceptionally hardy animals called tardigrades crashed into the moon. Now, mission control experts are trying to determine if the tardigrades survived the impact.
“We believe the chances of survival for the tardigrades . . . are extremely high,” Nova Spivack, founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, which provided the tardigrades for the lander, tells BBC. That’s because tardigrades can survive in extreme environments, including high pressure, extreme radiation, and even space.
The tiny animals were dehydrated and stored in resin or stuck on tape and packaged in a “lunar library,” a small container filled with a microscopic archive of human history, human DNA, and the tardigrades. The goal of sending the material to moon was to store a “back-up” of human knowledge and Earth’s biology in case a life-ending event ...
