A 3D-rendered illustration of a tardigrade a.k.a. water bear a.k.a. moss piglet. (3Dstock/Shutterstock)
Microscopic tardigrades, Earth’s most resilient species, were aboard a privately funded Israeli spacecraft
Thousands of ancient, eight-legged, nigh-indestructible creatures have crash-landed on the moon — and they’ll probably be there long after the human species is wiped off the face of the Earth. They’re called tardigrades, and 10,000 of them were suspended in artificial amber and loaded onto an Israeli spacecraft that crashed onto the moon in April.
"Tardigrade is one of the, if not the, most durable forms of life that we know of. They’re ancient, multicellular, nearly indestructible, microscopic organisms that have survived all five mass extinctions on Earth," Nova Spivack, whose organization shipped the creatures into space, told As It Happens guest host Piya Chattopadhyay.
"And now there are some of them on the moon."
‘Backing up planet Earth’
Spivack is the founder and CEO of the Arch Mission Foundation, a non-profit with a mission of "backing up planet Earth." To this end, they created a "lunar library" with a 30-million-page archive of human history "etched into nickel films," as well as millions of cells, human DNA, and tardigrades in suspended animation. […]
Full article: Ancient, near-indestructible ‘water bears’ have crash landed on the moon
More about tardigrades, AKA “water bears”:
A Bizarre Tardigrade Was Found With a Belly Full of Strange, Glittery Material
New species of ‘water bears’ discovered in parking lot — tardigrades
The Secret of the Crazy-Tough Water Bear, Finally Revealed
