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How Did The Tardigrades Survive The Crash Landing Of Beresheet Spacecraft?

How Did The Tardigrades Survive The Crash Landing Of Beresheet Spacecraft?

On April 11, 2019, the Beresheet lander of the Israeli non-profit SpaceIL crashed into the moon because of a technical malfunction. The spacecraft carried along with it SpaceIL’s first lunar library, a DVD-sized archive which had about 30 million pages of information, human DNA samples, plant cells, animal cells, and thousands of tardigrades. The Beresheet lunar crash led to speculations of these Tardigrades or ‘Water Bears’ being released into space.

SEE ALSO: Crashed SpaceIL’s Beresheet Spacecraft May Have Colonized Moon With Live ‘Water Bears’ From Earth

This led to the belief that the Moon now has life, but Nova Spivack, CEO, Arch Mission Foundation had pointed out that some of these tardigrades were sealed epoxy and the others were trapped on the sticky side of Kapton tape, so they wouldn't be able to reproduce on Moon.

The ‘Water Bears’ were dehydrated and in this dry state, they slow down their metabolism through cryptobiosis to 0.01 percent of the normal speed, a skill they acquired to survive drought. Tardigrades can survive under pressures of up to 74,000 times the pressure felt on sea level. Thus, the crash impact would not have harmed them. They can stay in the dry state for extended periods of time until they find themselves in a more habitable environment or find water.

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A European team of scientists back in September 2007 sent about 3000 living tardigrades in space under the ‘Tardigrades in Space’(TARDIS) program and were flabbergasted by the extreme persistence to live that was displayed by the creatures. Within the test, they were strapped outside a FOTON-M3 rocket and launched into space which returned after a period of 12 days. The test led to the discovery that ‘Water Bears’ could survive an extended period in space as almost 68 percent of them survived the test. It was concluded that, "the space vacuum, which entails extreme dehydration and cosmic radiation, were not a problem for water bears."

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Spivack also explained that the goal of Arch Mission Foundation is to find a backup of planet Earth and to make sure that our heritage is protected, and we should always plan for the worst. The foundation wants to create an archive of all human knowledge that will be able to survive for as long as possible and to plant them on Earth and in space.

Although a tardigrade spill on Moon is not alarming, if something like that were to occur on Mars it would be devastating as the planet shows potential to support life. That is the reason all equipment that is sent to Mars or other such celestial body undergoes sterilization as a precautionary measure against microbes.

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