[Our 1969-72 "lunar camping" was clearly pre- the zero footprint notions of even state-side National Parks wilderness exploration.] But NASA and the then-USSR did their level best to avoid contaminating the moon with earth-life -- even microbes.
Fast forward about a half-century, now -- and sadly, an Israeli launched lunar lander has made a very hard landing on the Moon. The robotic lander was carrying a life science experiment package -- that included tardigrades -- "water bears."
Countering what would be our first guess -- in fact, the packet was designed to withstand a hard landing. And water bears have been revived after being frozen for 31 years. [We earlier reported on 41,000 year old, frozen then University of Tennessee-reanimated Siberian nematodes -- multi cell organisms.] So -- here is the tantalizing possibility: could they be "hibernating" on the surface, right now?
. . . .Based on Arch Mission's analysis of the spacecraft's path as well as the makeup of the lunar library itself, Spivack told Wired on Monday that he's confident the library, a "DVD-sized object made of thin sheets of nickel," survived the crash mostly intact.
That doesn't mean the DNA or water bears are in good shape.
"We sent enough DNA to regenerate life on Earth, if necessary," Spivack tweeted Tuesday. "Although it would require more advanced biotech than we have to do that. At least our DNA is offsite now. But note that cells and DNA cannot survive or reproduce on the moon. Yet if retrieved they could be useful. . . ."
Of course, it would be a bad thing if these water bears were spilled out into the open, on the lunar surface -- as thousands of them were in the packet. Who knows what mutations might occur, in the radiation of a no-ozone layer body? I feel a very bad Sam Rockwell sci fi thriller evolving, somewhere on a napkin -- in a Starbucks, in Pacoima. . . heh.
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