A Crashed Israeli Lunar Lander Spilled Tardigrades on the Moon

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

https://media.wired.com/photos/5d486249ddaa8900083fd970/master/w_2000,c_limit/Science_Tardigrade_186450007.jpg

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?

In the weeks following the Beresheet crash, Spivack pulled together the Arch Mission Foundation’s advisers in an attempt to determine whether the lunar library had survived the crash. Based on their analysis of the spacecraft’s trajectory and the composition of the lunar library, Spivack says he is quite confident that the library—a roughly DVD-sized object made of thin sheets of nickel—survived the crash mostly or entirely intact. In fact, the decision to include DNA samples and tardigrades in the lunar library may have been key to its survival.

“For the first 24 hours we were just in shock,” Spivack says. “We sort of expected that it would be successful. We knew there were risks but we didn’t think the risks were that significant.”

https://www.wired.com/story/a-crashed-israeli-lunar-lander-spilled-tardigrades-on-the-moon/

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. Hopefully they won't affect the tides or menstrual cycles.

They are, after all, wee little things.

They should just head for the spot where the giant Coca Cola spaceship is sucking up all the water and catch a ride home.


(Oh, if only I had the link to that old thread....damn, but that was some funny shit)

[2naSalit]

2. An upgrade

of space junk?

[sarisataka]

3. Oh shit...

Harbinger Down is about to change from sci fi to documentary
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3397918/?ref_=fn_al_tt_0

[5X]

4. Save the Tardigrades

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181248308

[Baitball Blogger]

5. As we speak, someone is writing a sci-fi movie about Tardigrades

evolving on the moon.

[Cracklin Charlie]

6. They didn't know the risks were that significant?

Good grief.

[cbdo2007]

7. It isn't up to us to not explore and spread germs/animals/etc around...it is up to those places

to host or kill them off.

The entire history of all biological expanse has centered around things spreading via natural or unnatural ways. That humans are doing it is irrelevant to whether or not it will be done.

[Javaman]

8. Personally, I welcome our new Luna Water Bear overlords. nt