Under the surface of the Moon, the germ cells of 6.7 million terrestrial species, including humans, should be stored. “The earth is a naturally unstable environment,” said study author Jekan Thanga, who came up with the plan with his team at the University of Arizona.
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Due to the instability of our planet, any storage on Earth would not adequately protect the stored specimens. And that’s why he proposes to create a kind of “Noah’s Ark” on the moon – as soon as possible.
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Reproductive cells should be stored in cryomodules, hermetically sealed boxes with deep-frozen contents, and placed in recently discovered lunar shafts through which, according to scientists, lava flowed billions of years ago.
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These shafts or tunnels reach 80 to 100 meters below the surface, “providing a ready-made refuge below the surface of the Moon, which is threatened by large temperature fluctuations, as well as meteorites and radiation,” Thanga said.
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The ark concept already uses the global Svalbard plant seed warehouse on the Norwegian island of West Svalbard beyond the Arctic Circle. The warehouse sunk in the rock stores 992 thousand unique samples, each represented by an average of 500 seeds.
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This plan may look like some sci-fi literature or movies, but Arizona University scientists have calculated that sending cryogenically frozen sperm, egg, spore, and seed samples to the moon to about 6.7 million terrestrial species would be feasible. All samples could be transported to the Moon in 250 flights. By comparison, the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) required 40 space flights.
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