The lunar lander Beresheet spilled "aquatic bears" able to live in space



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  • The Israeli private spacecraft Beresheet dumped its payload when it crashed on the moon in April.
  • It carried tardigrades, microscopic creatures that could live in extreme conditions, including in space.
  • Nova Spivack, the founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, who designed the archives containing the tardigrades, told Wired that they were probably still alive.
  • He added that the container that contained them had probably not been destroyed during the impact of the accident.
  • Visit the INSIDER homepage for more stories.

Before its crash in April, Beresheet was supposed to be the first private plane to land on the moon.

The lunar lander, led by the Israeli space company SpaceIL, was designed to measure the magnetic field of the moon and carry a time capsule to leave on the celestial body.

This time capsule, created by the Arch Mission Foundation, contained a library containing textbooks, almost all of English Wikipedia, classic literature and human DNA samples.

It also included thousands of tardigrades, microscopic creatures also known as "aquatic bears". And according to the founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, Nova Spivack, they are still alive.

"Our payload may be the only thing left of this mission," Spivack told Wired.

Read more: A group of tardigrades crashed on the moon in April. The indestructible creatures could still be alive.

Tardigrades can live in extreme conditions, including in space. In a last minute decision, the Arch Mission Foundation dehydrated the tardigrades and put them in resin with the nickel engravings that included the remaining data from the capsule library. Spivack told Wired that the resin should be strong enough that the library would not be broken or melted even when Beresheet landed on the moon.

"Our job, as a safeguard of this planet, is to ensure the protection of our heritage, both our knowledge and our biology," said Spivack. "We have to sort out the worst."

This is good news for tardigrades. These "water bears" are basically indestructible and can be rehydrated and revitalized even after a decade of sleep. As Business Insider has already pointed out, as long as they are not exposed to direct sunlight, they have a good chance of being alive.

"The dry tardigrades can survive pressures up to 74 000 times higher than sea level, so the [crash] Roberto Guidetti, an evolution zoologist, told Business Insider that the impact should not be a problem for them. They can stay dry for decades, even centuries. "

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