There’s something wrong with us.
We’ve risen to prominence on a world that’s positively “rippling with life,” as Carl Sagan described it. The more we study our planet, the more we find life eking out an existence in the most unlikely of places.
Yet we seem destined to drive many species to extinction, even though we see those extinctions coming from miles away.
As an indication of how serious the problem is, one group of researchers suggests we use the Moon—yes, the Moon—as a safe repository for Earth’s biodiversity.
The idea makes sense technically—samples of Earth life can be preserved cryogenically on the Moon—but it also sounds like something out of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. At first glance, it seems like an absurd proposal. However, as Camus explained, acknowledging absurdity is the starting point for genuine understanding.
Camus and Vonnegut are both dead, so it’s up to living scientists to prepare for the odious task of preventing a catastrophic reduction in Earth’s biodiversity. They’re taking it seriously.
In a new paper in the journal BioScience, a diverse group of scientists from the USA outline their plan. The paper is “Safeguarding Earth’s biodiversity by creating a lunar biorepository.” The first author is Mary Hagedorn, a Senior Research Cryobiologist at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, DC.
“Earth’s biodiversity is increasingly threatened and at risk,” the authors write, shocking no one.
This graph shows extinction rates are rising along with the human population and industrial activity. Image Credit: Earth.org
Human activities are behind species extinction. “Because of myriad anthropogenic drivers, a high proportion of species and ecosystems face destabilization and extinction threats that are accelerating faster than our ability to save these species in their natural environment,” the authors write.
Their proposal is to build a biorepository on the Moon that can hold “prioritized taxa of live cryopreserved samples.” Not only would the biorepository protect Earth’s precious, wondrous biodiversity, but it would also serve space exploration and terraforming.
The researchers are in the initial stages of exploring the idea. They intend to test the cryopreservation of animal skin samples containing fibroblast cells. Fibroblasts are the main connective tissue cells in bodies, present in the skin, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, and bones.
Fibroblasts are not stem cells, but they share some similarities with stem cells. They’re the only other type of cell that can regenerate tissues and organs and create copies of themselves. Fibroblasts are also used in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. They’re widely used in research and are sometimes called the “workhorses” of cell culture.
Cryopreserved fibroblasts can stay frozen and alive for hundreds of years. Scientists are getting better at thawing cryopreserved materials to recover DNA and intact cells. They’re even able to thaw living organisms. In this 2018 research, coral larvae were cryopreserved, then warmed, and then resumed swimming. This 2023 research showed similar success. These efforts were both aimed at preserving Earth’s coral biodiversity. The scientific community is clearly concerned, and momentum is building.
“In the face of potential catastrophic ecosystem loss, such as coral reefs from climate-related warming, we propose the creation of a lunar biorepository to maintain samples in a cryopreserved state with little human intervention,” the authors of the new research write.
There’s nowhere on Earth with temperatures naturally low enough for cryopreservation. But the Moon is much different.
The authors point out that the Moon’s southern polar region is nearly ideal for a “hands-off” biorepository. In some craters there, the temperature is quite stable, with only small seasonal fluctuations. The temperature stays at or below -196 Celsius (-320 F), which is the temperature for liquid nitrogen and is considered the ideal temperature for cryopreservation.
This shaded relief image shows the Moon’s Shackleton Crater, a 21-km-wide crater permanently shadowed crater near the lunar south pole. The crater’s interior structure is shown in false colour based on data from NASA’s LRO probe. Like other craters in the region, Shackleton’s floor is in perpetual darkness, and the temperature is extremely low. Image Credit: NASA
The researchers envision a vault that could protect Earth’s most at-risk species. In the future, other plant and animal species will be added. “Our goal is to cryopreserve most animal species on Earth,” they write. A parallel goal is to preserve Earth species that can be used in future terraforming. “The biorepository could store biomaterials for food, filtration, microbial breakdown, and ecosystems engineering,” they explain.
There’s precedent for this type of thinking and this type of initiative: The Doomsday Vault.
In 2008, the Norwegian government opened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It’s a repository for seeds that protects crop diversity. It holds backup seeds preserved in other genebanks around the world. The vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million different seed samples, each holding up to 500 individual seeds. It is built into the side of a mountain on Spitsbergen Island in Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago. It maintains an ideal seed-preserving temperature of -18°C (-0.4°F). At only 1300 km from the North Pole, the site is kept cold in permafrost even if climate control fails.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault has room to preserve 4.5 million types of seeds. Image Credit: Crop Trust.
The Lunar Biorepository isn’t the first proposal to protect Earth’s biodiversity on the Moon. In 2021, researchers proposed the Lunar Ark, a facility in lunar lava tubes that could preserve the seeds, sperms, eggs, and DNA of endangered Earth life. But lunar lava tubes aren’t naturally as cold as polar craters, and the idea relies on solar power for energy. That means it’s susceptible to failure.
But at the naturally cold temperatures at the lunar pole, power failure isn’t an issue.
Initially, the Lunar Biorepository would hold endangered animal taxa. After that, it would need to expand and include plants since they’re critical to rebuilding ecosystems.
This list from the research shows what samples would be included initially in the Lunar Biorepository. Image Credit: Hagedorn et al. 2024.
The researchers are starting by developing an exemplar system to extract and cryopreserve tissue from the Starry Goby, a fish native to Hawaii. Previous researchers have shown that the species responds well to cryopreservation.
“Our vision is that these fibroblasts would be distributed into a variety of space-hardy cryopackaging and tested under space-like conditions on Earth. Candidate packaging for the cells would be tested next on the ISS,” the researchers state.
This graphic from the study shows the proposed process. Fins and DNA samples are collected from Starry Gobies, and cells can be either stored or expanded into fibroblasts. The fibroblasts can be cryopreserved and stored at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where they can be preserved for decades or longer. Then, they can be expanded into fibroblasts and cryopreserved again and tested on Earth again. The samples can then be sent to the ISS or its successor one day for testing, then returned to Earth again to test the system’s viability and to look for DNA changes. Image Credit: Hagedorn et al. 2024.
The Lunar Repository could offer protection that goes beyond the scientific. By virtue of its remote lunar location, it’s protected from Earthly climate disasters and natural disasters like Earthquakes. Human affairs can also be extremely messy and catastrophic, and in a deep crater at the lunar south pole, the repository would be isolated from political upheaval or war.
The authors recognize the many challenges involved, mostly technical. But the endeavour is a long-term one, so there’s time to solve problems.
“This is a decades-long program,” the authors write. “Realizing a lunar biorepository will require collaboration by a broad array of nations, cultural groups, agencies, and international stakeholders to develop acceptable sample holding, governance, and long-term plans.”
But the Moon is attracting a lot of attention and effort, and this project can be an important part of it all.
“Protecting Earth’s life must be a top priority,” they conclude.