Humans are planted on Earth. No one on the moon.. but maybe we are??
There are no humans currently on the moon. But it’s very possible that other Earthly animals exist right now on the lunar surface, following the crash of an Israeli lander in April.
The washing-machine-sized spacecraft – Aerospace Industries’ Beresheet – was on a mission to deposit what was basically a digital time capsule on the moon. It contained a primer on humanity and its achievements: thousands of books, DNA samples, textbooks and the secrets to David Copperfield’s magic tricks. It also contained thousands of dehydrated tardigrades – microscopic animals, commonly called “water bears,” known for being able to survive extreme conditions that prove fatal for nearly all other known lifeforms.
But on April 11, 2019, Beresheet’s gyroscopes failed and it crashed into the moon.
“For the first 24 hours we were just in shock,” Nova Spivack, found of Arch Mission Foundation, which seeks to create “a backup of planet Earth,” told Wired. “We sort of expected that it would be successful. We knew there were risks but we didn’t think the risks were that significant.”
The team knew the lander was toast. But subsequent analyses revealed that the lunar library likely survived the crash, meaning the tardigrades might have too. Tardigrades possess the rare ability to essentially stop their metabolism and enter a dormant, desiccated state. Although these tiny creatures only live for a few months, some have been put into a dormant state for 10 years and then were successfully revived. One was even revived after 30 years.
# # #