Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are microscopic animals that can survive for years without food or water. And now they’re on the moon!
It was just before midnight on April 11 and everyone at the Israel Aerospace Industries mission control center in Yehud, Israel, had their eyes fixed on two large projector screens. On the left screen was a stream of data being sent back to Earth by Beresheet, its lunar lander, which was about to become the first private spacecraft to land on the moon. The right screen featured a crude animation of Beresheet firing its engines as it prepared for a soft landing in the Sea of Serenity. But only seconds before the scheduled landing, the numbers on the left screen stopped. Mission control had lost contact with the spacecraft, and it crashed into the moon shortly thereafter.
Half a world away, Nova Spivack watched a livestream of Beresheet’s mission control from a conference room in Los Angeles. 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.
But when the Israelis confirmed Beresheet had been destroyed, Spivack was faced with a distressing question: Did he just smear the toughest animal in the known universe across the surface of the moon?
lord help us all if they morph into epa lawyers.
a tardigrade lands on the moon finds itself attacked by a lunar lion, a lunar tiger, and a lawyer.
its weapon only has 2 shots left in it.
whats it do?
shoots the lawyer twice to be safe.
Spore drive! 😂
I guess we could mount a cleanup campaign there at the landing site. The tardigrades are not going anywhere soon.
Once we return to the Moon, that is.
The link attached about tardigrades only suggests the eggs can survive “space”; not the creature.
The link also states that tardigrades eat single cell life.
So what will tardigrades get to eat on the moon?
Each other?
Tardigrade eggs?
Unless someone goes to the crash site quickly, those exposed tardigrades will enjoy solar wind particles, high energy solar radiation and extremes of heat and cold; both happening extremely quickly.
Not to overlook the occasional meteorite pounding the little bugger at 30 to 50 thousand miles per hour velocities.
Declare the small lunar location a contaminated location to be avoided; with severe penalties for violators. Like, take away their spaceship.
I’m sure we will spend many taxpayer dollars someday to see if they survived.
It might be worth it. It would tell us something about the toughness of life, and its potential to migrate between celestial objects.
There they go again – the Moon is not Kosher anymore!
And to think Moses led them out of Egypt to the one place with no oil – now to the Moon with no atmosphere!
Are we seeing the Bible (yeah, Old Testament) repeating itself?
Anyway it was not just a “private venture” – the Israeli defense establishment is heavily involved.
Hey, Moses was neither a private venture – see the Covenant!
With all the raw radiation from space, the tardigrades could evolve in to something truly magnificent. Their intellect could well exceed that of humans which is not too hard- humans are such a dull species that many believe the absurd notion that an essential trace element released in to the ecosytem by their activities is destroying the planet, warranting abandonment of the technology that supports 1,000 times more of them in comfort and safety than would otherwise be supported.
The tardigrades could well develop the technology to explore the cosmos, starting with planet earth. They have Helium 3 on the moon, which is a very energy dense fuel. Will they analyse humans and think what a primitive retrograde planet – these are the intelligent species?
The clever and by now large astro tardigrades will examine archaelogical sites which will demonstrate how the humans were so stupid-they abandoned a wonderfully advanced civilisation to embrace a very pagan belief that the 3% of CO2 increase that was from them somehow was responsible for anything bad on their planet, in particular, that their planet was going to burn to a crisp.
All of the sudden, I’m feeling really itchy.
Students have so many of these – they hardly care anymore.
Great. Now I’ll sound like a flat-eather if someone asks me if I believe there’s life on the moon.
As a side note, I think we need to acknowledge the achievements of this “lowly” creature as there have now been MANY more tardigrades who have made it to the moon than humans.
Trust the Zionists to completely F*ck something up and then apologise for it afterwards. What in the name of all that is holy were those damn things doing on there in the first place? Next thing will be that they announce that in accordance with their Magic Book™ and by virtue of advance payment in the chosen currency of Yahweh, i.e. the foreskins of infant male human beings, the Moon has now been annexed for the Chosen People and Palestinians are forbidden from landing on it, because Tewworwists or something. But better stage a few pre-emptive bombings just in case.
NB: Before you start – no, not anti-semitic (Noah did not exist and neither did he have three sons, so the whole notion of semitism is entirely fictitious in the first place) – but anti-Zionist. Educate yourself.
Adrian, Yes, I agree. Sending up invasive extremophiles was a very irresponsible thing to do.
Have you ever actually looked at a Tardigrade under a microscope? They probably came from the moon in the first place!
Adrian, Yes, I agree. Sending up invasive extremophiles was a very irresponsible thing to do.