Scientists are just starting to understand the tardigrade — and it's fascinating
• The moon might have some new inhabitants: tiny critters called tardigrades, which can survive in extreme environments.
• On April 11, the tardigrades arrived on the moon aboard a spacecraft called Beresheet: a four-legged lander made by an Israeli nonprofit
• But SpaceIL's private moon mission ended when Beresheet crashed into the lunar surface due to a computer glitch.
• The founder of the company responsible for putting tardigrades onboard Beresheet, as well as other experts, think these creatures probably survived the crash. They're likely in a state of suspended animation.

The moon just got a little more crowded.

A horde of microscopic critters called tardigrades were passengers aboard the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet, which crashed into the lunar surface nearly four months ago.

But because tardigrates can survive in extreme environments, it's likely these tiny astronauts are still alive. The microscopic organisms can go without water and oxygen for long periods of time in a state of suspended animation called cryptobiosis, in which their bodies dry up and their metabolisms shut down. Place a dehydrated tardigrade in water and it regains its full function in a matter of hours.

"Tardigrades in dry state can survive pressures up to 74,000 times the pressure we experience at sea level, so the [crash] impact should not be a problem for them," evolutionary zoologist Roberto Guidetti told Business Insider. "They can stay dry for decades, potentially centuries."

Tardigrades are also known as water bears or moss piglets — apt nicknames, considering that these organisms look like eight-legged potatoes with scrunched up faces and tiny claws under a microscope.

Dehydrated tardigrades were placed aboard the Beresheet spacecraft by a non-profit company called the Arch Mission Foundation, which aims to develop a kind of backup of Earth.

In keeping with that mission, the company put a "lunar library" — a DVD-like disc containing a digital archive of nearly every English Wikipedia page, along with ebooks and human DNA samples — onboard the spacecraft. Thousands of tardigrades were attached to that library.

Beresheet left Earth on February 22, but as it approached the lunar surface on April 11, a computer glitch caused the spacecraft's main engine to malfunction, and it crashed into the moon traveling 310 miles per hour.

In a recent interview with WIRED, the Arch Mission Foundation's founder, Nova Spivack, said his company believes its disk, along with the accompanying tardigrades, survived the crash intact.

"Ironically, our payload may be the only surviving thing from that mission," he said.

That means thousands of tardigrades are now chilling on the moon.

The astronaut tardigrades, Guidetti said, are likely alive but not "active" — meaning they're still in the state of suspended animation. If they were somehow reintroduced to water on the lunar surface, they'd have the potential to return to an active state, but that would also require oxygen. </s> • The moon might have some new inhabitants: tiny critters called tardigrades, which can survive in extreme environments.
• On April 11, the tardigrades arrived on the moon aboard a spacecraft called Beresheet: a four-legged lander made by an Israeli nonprofit called SpaceIL.
• But SpaceIL’s private moon mission ended when Beresheet crashed into the lunar surface due to a computer glitch.
• The founder of the company responsible for putting tardigrades onboard Beresheet, as well as other experts, think these creatures probably survived the crash. They’re likely in a state of suspended animation.

The moon just got a little more crowded.

A horde of microscopic critters called tardigrades were passengers aboard the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet, which crashed into the lunar surface nearly four months ago.

But because tardigrates can survive in extreme environments, it’s likely these tiny astronauts are still alive. The microscopic organisms can go without water and oxygen for long periods of time in a state of suspended animation called cryptobiosis, in which their bodies dry up and their metabolisms shut down. Place a dehydrated tardigrade in water and it regains its full function in a matter of hours.

“Tardigrades in dry state can survive pressures up to 74,000 times the pressure we experience at sea level, so the [crash] impact should not be a problem for them,” evolutionary zoologist Roberto Guidetti told Business Insider. “They can stay dry for decades, potentially centuries.”

Tardigrades are also known as water bears or moss piglets – apt nicknames, considering that these organisms look like eight-legged potatoes with scrunched up faces and tiny claws under a microscope.

Dehydrated tardigrades were placed aboard the Beresheet spacecraft by a non-profit company called the Arch Mission Foundation, which aims to develop a kind of backup of Earth.

In keeping with that mission, the company put a “lunar library” – a DVD-like disc containing a digital archive of nearly every English Wikipedia page, along with ebooks and human DNA samples – onboard the spacecraft. Thousands of tardigrades were attached to that library.

Beresheet left Earth on February 22, but as it approached the lunar surface on April 11, a computer glitch caused the spacecraft’s main engine to malfunction, and it crashed into the moon traveling 310 miles per hour.

In a recent interview with WIRED, the Arch Mission Foundation’s founder, Nova Spivack, said his company believes its disk, along with the accompanying tardigrades, survived the crash intact.

“Ironically, our payload may be the only surviving thing from that mission,” he said.

That means thousands of tardigrades are now chilling on the moon.

The astronaut tardigrades, Guidetti said, are likely alive but not “active” – meaning they’re still in the state of suspended animation. If they were somehow reintroduced to water on the lunar surface, they’d have the potential to return to an active state, but that would also require oxygen.

Previously, water bears have been shown to survive in the vacuum of space, inside a volcano, and in an Antarctic lake 50 miles underground. They have even returned to normal functioning after being frozen for three decades.

Read More: In a lost lake 3,500 feet under the Antarctic Ice, scientists just found the carcasses of tiny creatures

The critters, which can grow up to 1.2 mm (0.05 inches) in length, can withstand temperatures between minus 272 degrees Celsius (minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit) and 151 degrees Celsius (304 degrees Fahrenheit). They’re also able to survive high levels of radiation and pressure up to six times that of the deepest part of Earth’s oceans.

Some scientists argue that tardigrades could survive catastrophic events like asteroid impacts that would wipe out most of Earth’s other species.

But dried-up tardigrades on the moon probably couldn’t stay alive forever.

“If they are directly exposed to unfiltered solar UV radiation, they will be structurally dead within a few days,” ecologist Ingemar Jönsson told Business Insider.

Temperature fluctuations on the moon also pose a problem: “Temperatures around and above 100 degrees Celsius [212 degrees Fahrenheit] will kill the animals quite quickly,” Jönsson added.

The tardigrades would have the best chance of survival, he said, if they ended up below the moon’s surface as a result of Beresheet’s crash. It’s unclear whether that’s what really happened, but if so, they’d be sheltered from UV radiation and cosmic radiation, and surrounding temperatures would consistently remain sub-zero.

“At such conditions they could probably survive for years,” Jönsson said. </s> On 11 April 2019, Israeli space company SpaceIL attempted to land the first privately-funded mission on to the Moon safely. While the mission failed in the final moments before it reached the surface, it seems the spacecraft might have tainted the moon's surface with tardigrades, or water bears, from Earth.

The Beresheet lander crashed on to the moon's surface, and may have become the first country to colonize an extraterrestrial body in the process… maybe.

Beresheet had a special package onboard — a "lunar library" put together by the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit aiming to create "a backup of planet Earth." The library contained 30 million pages of human history, an optical disc with human DNA samples and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades — microscopic, vacuum-tolerant microbes.

These microscopic animals are called 'water bears' or 'moss piglets', and they're the most resistant lifeform known to humankind. Worldwide, there are more than 1,000 such species of tardigrades on the planet, the most recent member of which was found in a parking lot in Japan.

Tardigrades were added to SpaceIL's Beresheet mission at the very last minute, according to The Times of Israel. These incredibly hardy organisms are known to survive in a dehydrated state for years on end. The Earth is teeming with these creatures, which can survive even in the harshest climates — including the vacuum of space.

When it was time to land, the Beresheet spacecraft initiated its landing sequence successfully, but only a few kilometres above the surface, the main engine failed and the spacecraft couldn't brake in time to make the soft-landing it was planning to. Instead, it crashed into the surface, as seen in these mesmerising before-and-after shots of its landing site, captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

While many experts expected the mission to succeed, news of the spacecraft's crash landing raised an important question: did scientists just smeared the surface of the moon with the toughest known animal the universe?

Based on an analysis of the spacecraft's trajectory and the contents of the lunar library, founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, Nova Spivack, is rather confident that the library survived mostly or almost entirely intact, according to a Wired report.

Tardigrades can survive for anywhere between days and years, to be revived by a couple of doses of water (rehydration). In their dehydrated, dormant state, all the metabolic reactions in the cells of tardigrades are stopped. Molecules of water are replaced by protein, effectively turning these adorable microbes into an inanimate glass-like blob.

While tardigrades can survive water-free for 10 years, the lunar library is designed to last for millions. Only now are scientists started to gauge how these critters survive in the most unforgiving of environments — space, most of all. Learning about this could point to a means of rehydrating them after far longer periods of dormancy.

Find our entire collection of stories, in-depth analysis, live updates, videos & more on Chandrayaan 2 Moon Mission on our dedicated #Chandrayaan2TheMoon domain. </s> The Israeli Beresheet lander module which crashed into the Moon’s surface in April might have impacted the Earth’s natural satellite in more ways than one, possibly seeding the lunar surface with terrestrial lifeforms, Wired reports.

As the media outlet points out, the lander was carrying a number of objects belonging to a non-profit group called Arch Mission Foundation whose goal is to create “a backup of planet Earth”, with the cargo including the organisation’s “first lunar library, a DVD-sized archive containing 30 million pages of information, human DNA samples, and thousands of tardigrade” – micro-animals also known as water bears that can survive even in space.

"Ironically, our payload may be the only surviving thing from that mission," said Nova Spivack, founder of the Arch Mission Foundation.

He noted that as tardigrades are capable of falling into dormant states, with their bodies becoming dehydrated, these creatures can potentially be revived in the future, though it remains unclear whether any of the water bears that were part of the Beresheet’s cargo could be recovered and revived.

The lander, which aimed to be the first spacecraft made with mostly private funding to touch down on the surface of the Moon, was the creation of the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL working in partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries and was launched on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in February, only to crash into the lunar surface on 11 April. </s> Tardigrades may have survived crash of Israel's lunar spacecraft Israel’s attempt to become the first country to land a private spacecraft on the moon ended in failure on Thursday., April 11, 2019. However, the chances of finding life on the lunar surface has ratcheted up, owing to its cargo of "water bears." It was looking good until The probe's main mission was to measure the moon's magnetic field, as it was orbiting the moon and after it landed. This information was important to scientists because, at one time, the moon's core was extremely hot, and this led to some surface rocks becoming magnetized. The all-important payload on Beersheet However, The Guardian notes that beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash of Beersheet onto the lunar surface - there is the lunar probe's unusual cargo to consider. Half a world away, in Los Angeles, California, Nova Spivack was also watching the live-feed of the Beersheet landing. Spivack is the founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit whose goal is to create “a backup of planet Earth." And he had a lot riding on the mission. In February, the Don’t stop believing! We came close but unfortunately didn’t succeed with the landing process. Selfie taken by Beresheet as it was coming in for a landing. Besides the list of articles described by the Times of Israel, the spacecraft was carrying the Did the tardigrades survive the crash? “Our payload may be the only surviving thing from that mission,” Nova Spivack, the organization’s founder, told Spivack, after consulting with the foundation's advisors, is quite confident, based on the spacecraft’s trajectory and the composition of the lunar library, that library - that the DVD-sized disc - may have survived. Tardigrades on the Moon be like: pic.twitter.com/zBs2BtDHq4 — Arch Mission Foundation (@archmission) August 6, 2019 “For the first 24 hours we were just in shock,” Spivack says. “We sort of expected that it would be successful. We knew there were risks but we didn’t think the risks were that significant.” Tardigrades (Milnesium tardigradum) were first discovered in the 18th century by the German zoologist and pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze. They are microscopic in size and affectionately known as "water bears," and can live in any environment, including scorching deserts, mountain tops and ever sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica. As Tardigrade found in Cleveland, Ohio, in one of the gutters on a house in 2015. Are the water bears living on the moon? Because the moon is considered lifeless, Nasa’s office of planetary protection does not get too excited if missions spill Earthly organisms on its surface. But that could all change if the world's nations come up with a global agenda for the moon. The Apollo astronauts left 96 bags of human waste on the lunar surface, and one of these days, someone is going to have to clean it up. As for the tardigrades, Philippe Reekie, an astrobiologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh says it is very possible the dehydrated tardigrades survived the crash. “I would imagine they would survive for some time,” he said. “The main problem with the moon is the vacuum and the high radiation, but tardigrades are proven to survive those conditions.” Reekie says we must keep in mind that if the tardigrades were in an active state, they likely would have died in the crash. “In their normal state, you can kill them quite easily,” he said. “We accidentally killed loads by accident because we subjected them to the extreme cold too fast.” Lukasz Kaczmarek, a tardigrade expert, and an astrobiologist at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań offers another opinion, though. He thinks they survived the crash to the lunar surface. “Tardigrades can survive pressures that are comparable to those created when asteroids strike Earth, so a small crash like this is nothing to them,” he said. "The animals could potentially survive on the moon for years," he added. The Israeli Beresheet probe was meant to be the first private lander to touch down on the moon. Watching the live video-stream from mission control in Israel on April 11, it was nip-and-tuck shortly after Beresheet began its descent to the moon's surface about 3 p.m. ET, even though everything had looked good at the beginning of the broadcast.It was looking good until the main engine, working along in an autonomous mode to set the lander down softly suddenly went dead about 15 kilometers (9 miles) above the surface. After working to reset the engine, mission control confirmed just minutes later that it had lost contact.The probe's main mission was to measure the moon's magnetic field, as it was orbiting the moon and after it landed. This information was important to scientists because, at one time, the moon's core was extremely hot, and this led to some surface rocks becoming magnetized.However, The Guardian notes that beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash of Beersheet onto the lunar surface - there is the lunar probe's unusual cargo to consider. Half a world away, in Los Angeles, California, Nova Spivack was also watching the live-feed of the Beersheet landing.Spivack is the founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit whose goal is to create “a backup of planet Earth." And he had a lot riding on the mission.In February, the Times of Israel reported the Beresheet lander would be carrying "a Hebrew Bible inscribed with nanotechnology on a small metal circle the size of a 5 shekel coin, and a time capsule with Israel’s Declaration of Independence and national anthem, the memories of a Holocaust survivor, children’s drawings of space and the moon, the Traveler’s Prayer and a note from the late former president Shimon Peres."Besides the list of articles described by the Times of Israel, the spacecraft was carrying the foundation’s first lunar library, a DVD-sized archive containing 30 million pages of information, human DNA samples, and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades, microscopic “water bears” that can survive pretty much any environment—including space.“Our payload may be the only surviving thing from that mission,” Nova Spivack, the organization’s founder, told Wired magazine. Spivack, after consulting with the foundation's advisors, is quite confident, based on the spacecraft’s trajectory and the composition of the lunar library, that library - that the DVD-sized disc - may have survived.“For the first 24 hours we were just in shock,” Spivack says. “We sort of expected that it would be successful. We knew there were risks but we didn’t think the risks were that significant.”Tardigrades (Milnesium tardigradum) were first discovered in the 18th century by the German zoologist and pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze. They are microscopic in size and affectionately known as "water bears," and can live in any environment, including scorching deserts, mountain tops and ever sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica.As CNET notes , scientists have succeeded in bringing tardigrades back to life after a 30-year deep freeze. As "extremophiles," tardigrades can shut down their metabolism and survive in hostile conditions for long periods.Because the moon is considered lifeless, Nasa’s office of planetary protection does not get too excited if missions spill Earthly organisms on its surface. But that could all change if the world's nations come up with a global agenda for the moon. The Apollo astronauts left 96 bags of human waste on the lunar surface, and one of these days, someone is going to have to clean it up.As for the tardigrades, Philippe Reekie, an astrobiologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh says it is very possible the dehydrated tardigrades survived the crash. “I would imagine they would survive for some time,” he said. “The main problem with the moon is the vacuum and the high radiation, but tardigrades are proven to survive those conditions.”Reekie says we must keep in mind that if the tardigrades were in an active state, they likely would have died in the crash. “In their normal state, you can kill them quite easily,” he said. “We accidentally killed loads by accident because we subjected them to the extreme cold too fast.”Lukasz Kaczmarek, a tardigrade expert, and an astrobiologist at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań offers another opinion, though. He thinks they survived the crash to the lunar surface. “Tardigrades can survive pressures that are comparable to those created when asteroids strike Earth, so a small crash like this is nothing to them,” he said. "The animals could potentially survive on the moon for years," he added. </s> The odds of finding life on the moon have suddenly rocketed skywards. But rather than elusive alien moonlings, the beings in question came from Earth and were spilled across the landscape when a spacecraft crashed into the surface.

The Israeli Beresheet probe was meant to be the first private lander to touch down on the moon. And all was going smoothly until mission controllers lost contact in April as the robotic craft made its way down. Beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash, Beresheet had an unusual cargo: a few thousand tiny tardigrades, the toughest animals on Earth.

Tiny but tough: the tardigrades Read more

Now, the organisation behind the tardigrades’ trip, the US-based Arch Mission Foundation – whose goal is to find a backup for Earth – has said the organisms may well have shrugged off the collision. “Our payload may be the only surviving thing from that mission,�? Nova Spivack, the organisation’s founder, told Wired magazine.

Tardigrades have fascinated scientists since their discovery in the 18th century by the German zoologist and pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze. The millimetre-long animals, sometimes known as water bears or moss piglets after their favoured environment and food, resemble cheerful eight-legged maggots wearing distinctly sphincter-like faces.

But it is not their appearance that has made their name. Tardigrades are considered the hardiest animals on Earth. They have been found on mountain tops, in scorching deserts, and lurking in subglacial lakes in Antarctica. In his book The Hidden Powers of Animals, Dr Karl Shuker claimed the beasts survived being frozen in liquid helium and being boiled at 149C.

The tardigrade’s secret is the ability to shrivel into a seed-like pod, expelling nearly all of its water and slashing its metabolism. In this “tun�? state, the animals can hunker down and survive conditions that would normally be swiftly fatal. In 2007, scientists discovered that inactive tardigrades are so tough they can survive the harsh radiation and frigid vacuum of space travel.

And so it came to be that there is life on the moon, probably. Lukasz Kaczmarek, a tardigrade expert and astrobiologist at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, said the animals may well have survived the crash landing. “Tardigrades can survive pressures that are comparable to those created when asteroids strike Earth, so a small crash like this is nothing to them,�? he said. The animals could potentially survive on the moon for years, he added.

Dehydrated tardigrades have been revived after years in an inactive state by plunging them into water. Once rehydrated, the animals become active again and feed and reproduce as normal. There is little chance of that happening to those that are lost in space, however. “They cannot colonise the moon because there is no atmosphere and no liquid water,�? Kaczmarek said. “But it could be possible to bring them back to Earth and then add the water. They should resurrect.�?

Tardigrades: Earth’s unlikely beacon of life that can survive a cosmic cataclysm Read more

Kaczmarek is exploring whether the ageing process itself grinds to a halt in dormant tardigrades, through what he calls a Sleeping Beauty model. He said it appears that a tardigrade that enters a tun state at one month old emerges with the same biological age when it is revived a decade later. “It is really amazing,�? he said. “It may be that we can use this in the future if we plan missions to different planets, because we will need to be young when we get there.�?

Philippe Reekie, an astrobiologist and PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, agreed that there was no reason to think dehydrated tardigrades would not survive on the moon. “I would imagine they would survive for some time,�? he said. “The main problem with the moon is the vacuum and the high radiation, but tardigrades are proven to survive those conditions.�?

But he cautioned that if the tardigrades were in an active state on impact, they may well have met their end. “In their normal state, you can kill them quite easily,�? he said. “We accidentally killed loads by accident because we subjected them to the extreme cold too fast.�?

Because the moon is considered lifeless, Nasa’s office of planetary protection does not frown on missions that spill Earthly organisms on its surface. After all, the Apollo astronauts left behind their own microbes in the 96 bags of human waste that await some future cleaner on the moon. Had the spacecraft spilled its living cargo on Mars, the story might be very different. </s> Video screenshot by Bonnie Burton/CNET

Tardigrades, affectionately known as water bears, are microscopic animals that can survive in almost any environment. We already know it's possible for scientists to bring tardigrades back to life after a 30-year deep freeze. As "extremophiles," tardigrades can shut down their metabolism and survive in hostile conditions for long periods. But can they survive in space, more specifically on the moon?

Back in April, an Israeli spacecraft called Beresheet, which carried thousands of dehydrated tardigrades (among other cargo), crashed on the moon. Some people wondered if the water bears could survive.

One of those people was Arch Mission Foundation founder Nova Spivack. Arch Mission Foundation is a nonprofit whose main goal is to create a "backup of planet Earth."

The Israeli spacecraft was transporting Arch Mission's first lunar library, a digital archive holding the equivalent of 30 million pages of information. It also carried human DNA samples and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades. It's unknown how much of the cargo actually ended up on the moon's surface following the crash.

Based on Arch Mission's analysis of the spacecraft's path as well as the makeup of the lunar library itself, Spivack told Wired on Monday that he's confident the library, a "DVD-sized object made of thin sheets of nickel," survived the crash mostly intact.

That doesn't mean the DNA or water bears are in good shape.

"We sent enough DNA to regenerate life on Earth, if necessary," Spivack tweeted Tuesday. "Although it would require more advanced biotech than we have to do that. At least our DNA is offsite now. But note that cells and DNA cannot survive or reproduce on the moon. Yet if retrieved they could be useful."

Spivack noted that the tardigrades cannot reproduce on the moon, regardless.

About the Tardigrades in the Lunar Library: Some are sealed in epoxy with 100 million human, plant and microorganism cells. Some are encapsulated onto the sticky side of a 1cm square piece of Kapton tape that is sealed inside the disc stack. They cannot reproduce on the Moon. — Nova Spivack (@novaspivack) August 6, 2019

"About the tardigrades in the Lunar Library: Some are sealed in epoxy with 100 million human, plant and microorganism cells," Spivack tweeted Tuesday. "Some are encapsulated onto the sticky side of a 1cm square piece of Kapton tape that is sealed inside the disc stack. They cannot reproduce on the moon."

Even though the dehydrated tardigrades can't spring to life on the moon, they could theoretically be gathered, revived and studied to teach us about their time there.

"It is not likely that cells can survive on the moon without a lot more protection from radiation," Spivack added. "However the human cells, plant cells and micro organisms we sent could be recovered, studied and their DNA extracted -- perhaps to be cloned and regenerated, far in the future."

Arch Mission Foundation, Nova Spivack and SpaceIL didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. </s> The toughest animals on Earth may be alive on the Moon after surviving an Israeli spacecraft crash earlier this year, scientists suspect.

A payload of several thousand hardy tardigrades were on board the Beresheet probe when it suffered a catastrophic failure during its final descent on April 11.

Although the lander smashed into the ground at high speed, the Arch Mission Foundation, which sent up the creatures, believes their cargo may have lived.

Tardigrades are the world’s most indestructible species, with Oxford University estimating they will survive on Earth until the sun dies, some 10 billion years from now, after everything else has died out.

They are able to survive for up to 30 years... </s> Tardigrades, more commonly known as "water bears," are microscopic creatures capable of surviving the harshest extreme conditions. In fact, they were the first animal to survive in the vacuum of space in 2007. Now, it seems, they might be ready to colonize the Moon. BBC News reports that an Israeli spacecraft carrying the tiny creatures in a state of dehydration crash-landed on the Moon back in April. All they need is a bit of water to reanimate, and voila! We'd have a colony of lunar tardigrades.

First described by German zoologist Johann Goeze in 1773, they were dubbed tardigrada ("slow steppers" or "slow walkers") four years later by Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian biologist. That's because tardigrades tend to lumber along like a bear. Since they can survive almost anywhere, they can be found in lots of places: deep-sea trenches, salt and freshwater sediments, tropical rain forests, the Antarctic, mud volcanoes, sand dunes, beaches, and lichen and moss. (Another name for them is "moss piglets," immortalized in a 2017 South Park episode where the gang teaches tardigrades to dance to Taylor Swift songs for science class.)

They're not technically members of the extremophile class of organisms since they don't so much thrive in extreme conditions as endure, but they can endure for an impressively long time. Their secret? They can suspend their metabolism, enabling them to go without food or water for 30 years or more, and they can survive dehydrated for at least five years. Once revived, they go on with their lives, even capable of reproducing to replenish their numbers.

The tardigrades aboard the SpaceIL Beresheet lunar lander were supplied by the Arch Mission Foundation, an organization dedicated to keeping backups of the flora and fauna of Earth by sending a "lunar library" into space, part of the group's ongoing Billion Year Archive initiative. The library is a 30 million-page archive of human history and civilization, stored on a nanoscale device akin to a DVD—except it's made of 25 layers of nickel disks just 40 microns thick. The archive purportedly can be read with an optical microscope or even a magnifying glass, and it contains thousands of books, DNA samples, and a few thousand water bears, among other treasures.

According to the organization's website, "We intend to gradually pepper the solar system with records of our civilization.... The more locations that Arch Libraries are sent to, the greater the probability that at least one of them will survive to be discovered in the distant future. Long after the pyramids have turned to dust, and no matter what transpires on Earth, the Billion Year Archive will remain."

The dehydrated tardigrade samples were in a state of suspended animation for their trip to the Moon and were encased in amber. But given how hardy the creatures can be, "We believe the chance of survival for the tardigrades are extremely high," Arch Mission Foundation co-founder Nova Spivack told BBC News. Per Wired, “In the best-case scenario, Beresheet ejected the Arch Mission Foundation’s lunar library during impact, and it lies in one piece somewhere near the crash site.” Granted, it's a long shot that water would magically appear (perhaps from thawed water ice) on the Moon in sufficient quantities to rehydrate any surviving tardigrades and allow them to thrive. But in principle, a colony of water bears is within the realm of possibility.

Even if they don't survive, BBC News has a suggestion for Hollywood. "There's definitely some great source material for a sci-fi/horror movie. Attack of the Moss Piglets from the Moon? We'd watch it."

So would we.
Scientists at the Spring, Texas, Arch Mission Foundation confirm that tardigrades in a cryptobiotic state were added to the payload of the failed SpaceIL Beresheet lander that crashed on the Moon on 11 April 2019, and may have survived the crash.