Scientists want to send endangered species’ cells to the moon

As more and more species near extinction, scientists have been collecting samples from animals, plants and other creatures and storing them in biorepositories across the globe (SN: 5/8/19). But climate change, environmental disasters and wars threaten these modern Noah’s arks (SN: 2/28/22). Now, a team of researchers is brainstorming an out-of-this-world solution: building one of these vaults on the moon.

A biorepository in a permanently shadowed region at the moon’s south pole could be far more stable than those on Earth. Those areas usually remain around –196° Celsius, the minimum temperature required to store most animal cells long-term, research scientist Mary Hagedorn and colleagues report July 31 in BioScience.

“It’s very good to have as many plans as possible, especially when it comes to saving our biodiversity and life on Earth,” says Hagedorn, of the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington D.C.

The need for a biobank on the moon

Hagedorn and colleagues were inspired by the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, which takes advantage of freezing Arctic temperatures to preserve millions of seeds from around the world.

But in 2017, melting permafrost flooded the vault and put its precious seeds at risk. That event and others like it underscore the need for a backup plan, researchers say.

A few years later, a different team proposed building a lunar ark in lava tubes that run beneath the moon’s surface (SN: 12/15/16), but that design requires a solar-powered cooling system; any loss of the power and the samples would be destroyed. In the moon’s forever-frozen shadowed regions, a lunar vault wouldn’t need energy or constant human maintenance, Hagedorn’s team says.

Given the shadowy south pole’s low temperatures, Hagedorn says, a vault there could store “one of the most powerful cells that we have today” — fibroblasts. Scientists can transform these animal cells into stem cells, “and then those stem cells can be used for cloning,” she says. The cells could be valuable for regenerating populations of threatened or extinct species and for building ecosystems in future human colonies on the moon or Mars (SN: 11/18/20).

What will it take to build one?

The new proposal has its share of hurdles, including what to do about radiation and the long-term effects of microgravity on the samples. Hagedorn and colleagues are designing radiation-proof sample storage containers. The next step would be to test out prototypes on a future moon mission.

“The authors do a good job laying out many of the challenges,” says lunar scientist Benjamin Greenhagen of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. Another problem could be dust. “Dust is everywhere and gets in everything,” he says. “If their storage requires mechanisms or seals, they will want to consider dust mitigation from the very earliest stages.”

Some of the moon’s permanently dark regions also aren’t immune from temperature swings, as more or less reflected light shines into the shadows, Greenhagen says. “They are still cold but perhaps not always cold enough for this project without some level of thermal management.”

By far, the biggest challenge will be getting buy-in from the scientific community and other stakeholders, and to get nations to work together on the plan, Hagedorn says.

Furthermore, “there are communities on Earth to whom the moon is sacred,” Greenhagen says. “The authors should proactively engage these communities and look for an inclusive path forward to store biologic materials on the moon.”

Samples that should be deposited first in the lunar vault include those from endangered species, pollinators, ecological engineers and species that have the potential to help humans during space exploration, the team says. But because the project is still in early stages, “nothing’s set in stone at this point, other than we would probably go to the moon,” Hagedorn says. The team welcomes feedback on the proposal.