Life on Earth is fragile . Through the many billions of year of our planet ’s story , countless metal money have die nonextant . Humanity has also contributed to that process in a variety of ways , the latest of them all being theclimate crisis . Preserving a record book of biodiversity on Earth is a complex but important task . Manyvaultsexist that contain specimens , keep dependable for a just - in - fount situation . An external team is now proposing to build one on the Moon .
Theproposalis led by Dr Mary Hagedorn of the Smithsonian ’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute . The theme is to create a passive , long - lasting computer memory facility for Earth ’s most at - peril animal species . The samples will be cryopreserved and that ’s why portions of the Moon have an advantage . There are craters at the poleswhose underside never see sunlight . In those area the temperature always remains below -196 ° C ( -321 ° F ) .
This is an extremely advantageous feature for the long - term stability of such a hurdle . The samples can be preserved without human intervention or power . Those are two prerequisite among the many that Earth repositories have . And a challenge to those here might put the whole organisation at peril .
There is also the mankind itself . The Moon hasan atmosphere so thinthat it is essentially a vacuum , so no weather to concern about . And its earthquake are nothing like Earth ’s own . Vaults on Earth are work up in unmanageable - to - memory access and stable areas , but that only minimizes dangers and does n’t remove them . The famous Svalbard Global Seed Vault had toundergo refurbishmentafter the unexpected thawing of the fence in permafrost led to water supply leak into the ingress tunnel .
The idea has potential , but it is not simply a affair of send a abridgement to the Moon and being done with it . The team is looking at the various challenge that building such arepositorywould confront . One is deportation . Another is how to protect the sample from radiation . A third one is the governance of such a facility .
The team is go to modernise a communications protocol using a exclusive species , the starry gudgeon ( Asterropteryx semipunctata ) . The lunar biorepository wouldcryopreservean animal skin sample distribution with fibroblast cells ; clones can be made from fibroblasts .
The squad hope to build partnerships with space authority and conduct tests on the International Space Station , to mime some of the succeeding challenge .
The study is publish in the journalBioScience .
