- According to a report published in the American Magazine Wired, an Israeli spacecraft that crashed on the moon during a recent attempt at a soft landing had thousands of Earthlings aboard – virtually indestructible tardigrades, also known as “water bears” or “moss piglets.”.
- The microscopic creatures — which can withstand extreme radiation, blistering heat, the coldest temperatures in the universe and even decades without food – likely made it out alive, an American organization responsible for their trip.
- The lunar lander Beresheet, which was about to become the first private spacecraft to land on the moon, crashed on April 11, 2019.
- According to the Wired, “as the founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit whose goal is to create “a backup of planet Earth,” Spivack had a lot at stake in the Beresheet mission. The spacecraft was carrying the foundation’s first lunar library, a DVD-sized archive containing 30 million pages of information, human DNA samples, and thousands of tardigrades, those microscopic “water bears” that can survive pretty much any environment—including space.”
About Tardigrades
- Tardigrades are creatures under a millimetre long that can survive being heated to 150C and frozen to almost absolute zero.
- The water bears had been dehydrated to place them in suspended animation and then encased in artificial amber.
