According to news on September 2, as global climate change intensifies, the biodiversity of the earth is facing unprecedented threats. Even the global seed bank, known as the "Doomsday Ark", is not immune to the impact of extreme weather. In order to meet this urgent challenge, American scientists have proposed a bold idea: to establish a new and more solid biological sample storage repository on the moon to permanently preserve and back up samples of precious seeds, plants, animals, microorganisms and other life forms on the earth.
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In the fall of 2016, permafrost in a remote Norwegian mountain range melted due to sharply rising temperatures, and the ensuing floods breached the entrance tunnel to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. This incident sent a stark warning: Even the "Doomsday Ark" seed bank, which spends huge sums of money and aims to ensure global food supply, cannot withstand the threat of climate warming.
As critical thresholds on climate change continue to be breached, risks to the long-term security of seed banks continue to rise. Opened in 2008 as a "fail-safe" mechanism for more than 1.3 million seed samples from around the world, the seed vault is located on an archipelago in the Arctic Circle. Research shows the region is warming six times faster than the global average. It is these looming threats that prompted a team of American scientists to propose an ambitious vision in the journal Bioscience: to establish a new, more secure repository on the moon, this time not just to store seeds, but also samples of plants, animals and microorganisms.
"At natural history museums, we think about what materials are going to be preserved, where to preserve them, and how to store them?" said Lynne Parenti of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and a co-author on the paper. With more and more species threatened with extinction due to climate change and habitat loss, Parenti believes it's time to reexamine how to ensure the future survival of these species. In addition to Svalbard, there are more than 1,750 gene banks around the world that preserve samples of species in case they need to be revived in the future. Parenti believes that relying solely on these gene pools is no longer enough to provide adequate insurance.
"The moon is an ideal storage location because it is remote and far away from the disasters on Earth," Parenti said. "If we can realize this idea, we believe it will be successful."
The proposed lunar biorepository would be fully automated, requiring no human intervention, and would be dedicated to storing frozen cells at ultra-low temperatures, conditions where biological activity would be suspended. The frozen cells are expected to survive for hundreds of years and can be thawed and used to restore DNA and entire biological populations. The team has previously successfully cryopreserved living cells from star gobies, hoping that these skin cells could one day regenerate the population.
“I’ve been thinking about how to protect passive biostorage facilities like the Svalbard Seed Vault that can sustainably preserve seeds without labor or energy maintenance,” said Mary Hagedorn, the paper’s lead author and Parenti’s colleague at the Smithsonian. However, no place on Earth can maintain a storage environment of minus 196 degrees Celsius or colder, which is necessary for long-term preservation of frozen cells. So Hagedorn's team looked to the moon, where some areas are much cooler than Earth.
If this idea can be realized, researchers believe that the lunar repository will provide an important guarantee for the biodiversity of the earth's ecosystem and prevent the occurrence of earth disasters.
The idea may sound like science fiction, but the challenges of making it a reality are daunting—from how to ensure there is enough genetic diversity in stored samples to repopulate the planet, to the scant evidence on the feasibility of long-term cryopreservation of cells to regenerate species, to the sheer cost of launching such a program. Hagedorn's team has yet to provide specific estimates on costs or timelines.
However, a few weeks ago, the team took a major step toward realizing this vision, expanding the size of the research team to include engineers such as Garret Fitzpatrick of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Fitzpatrick worked for NASA and led the design of a system for sending biological samples to the International Space Station for experiments. Sending tissue to the moon at cryogenic temperatures is a related but more challenging task.
Fitzpatrick and his team first focused on developing a demonstration mission to send frozen cells to the International Space Station to answer an all-important question: "Can we maintain a sufficient temperature range throughout the entire mission phase," Fitzpatrick asked, "from launch vehicle integration to launch, to the moon, landing, possible storage, and ultimately arrival at the destination?"
"Sending a cryogenic sample into space and maintaining it on the lunar surface are almost two separate engineering challenges," Fitzpatrick said.
Although the problem of cryopreserving cells from Earth species on the moon is a niche challenge, surprisingly, one competing team is already ahead of the curve and conducting related research.
A group of engineers at the University of Arizona designed a lunar biological sample storage system in Professor Jekan Thanga's SpaceTREx laboratory. The project began as a student project exploring the potential use of lunar lava tubes, which were discovered in the early 2010s and were seen as ideal refuges for human activity on the moon, as well as biological repositories for what Hagedorn's team envisioned as "lunar arks."
Lava tubes are formed when flowing magma solidifies on the outside while continuing to flow on the inside, eventually leaving a cavity. Such structures are widespread on Earth and are presumed to be found in the subsurface of other previously volcanic bodies, including the Moon. Planetary scientists believe that the natural barrier provided by these molten remnants of the moon can effectively protect astronauts, equipment and biological samples from solar radiation, deep space radiation and the threats of meteorites impacting at high speeds.
Tanga's team has designed a system sketch that plans to use solar panels and battery power to actively reduce the temperature inside the lava tube to the extremely low level required to build a "lunar ark". This is in sharp contrast to Hagedorn's team's vision, which hopes to use the moon's natural environmental conditions to maintain the low temperatures needed to store samples. “The core idea of our approach is passivity,” Parenti explains, noting that past ideas for lunar storage facilities have required human maintenance, something their approach seeks to avoid.
To achieve permanent deep freezing of samples, they propose building a repository at the lunar south pole to take advantage of permanent shadows in specific areas of the crater there, where temperatures can naturally drop to minus 196 degrees Celsius. Under such conditions, sample storage requires no human intervention and can be maintained only by remote-controlled vehicles and robots.
In theory, these polar shadow areas are ideal locations for storage repositories, but Tanga questioned: "We don't know the specific conditions there yet." He mentioned NASA's recent cancellation of an Antarctic exploration mission due to technical difficulties, and emphasized: "This matter is full of irony. Although the moon is very close to the earth, it may be one of the most extreme places in the entire solar system."
Fitzpatrick is optimistic, however, that NASA's current lunar exploration program will provide valuable opportunities to study the polar shadow zone in depth, including a mission later this year to land on a ridge overlooking the polar shadow. However, Tanga warned that as NASA explores these areas, we may further understand the challenges of surviving and operating in extremely cold environments.
"Working in low-temperature environments is never easy," Tanga explains. "Mechanical components may behave abnormally, such as freezing or getting stuck. Even in a vacuum environment like space, the phenomenon of 'cold welding', where two pieces of metal bond when they come into contact, can occur under moderately cold conditions."
Tanga prefers to build a "lunar ark" inside a lava tube because planetary scientists believe these lava tubes are similar to similar structures on Earth, albeit at lower temperatures, providing researchers and engineers with a basis for prediction and planning. As for cost and timeline, Tanga and Hagedorn's concept has yet to be finalized. But Tanga expects that once the design is complete, which could take years, it will be faster and cheaper to build and assemble than the International Space Station.
Still, the final cost of building a "lunar ark" could run into the billions of dollars. In this regard, some people believe that these funds may be better invested in more stable solutions on earth. Taking the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as an example, although the 2016 flood did not directly damage the samples, it exposed the shortcomings of its fail-safe protection capabilities. The architects admit that extreme climate conditions, such as melting permafrost, were not factored into the original design plans. But since then, millions of dollars have been invested in upgrading preventive measures.
In 2019, the walls of the seed vault entrance tunnel were waterproofed, potential heat sources were removed, and drainage ditches were dug to prevent water seepage. A CropTrust spokesman said the facility was "very secure". It is conveniently located and equipped with a modern cooling system capable of maintaining ideal storage conditions of minus 18 degrees Celsius. The seed library supports high-frequency access operations and is closely monitored to ensure security.
The spokesperson further pointed out that the threat of climate change to global crop diversity and food security far outweighs its direct risk to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Crop Trust, said of the lunar biorepository proposal that the idea highlights the urgency of protecting and utilizing Earth's crop diversity. He pointed out: "The systems we have established today, the lessons learned, and the seeds of protection are all valuable resources for human exploration of the moon and other planets. Now, collaboration, cooperation, and conservation efforts on Earth ensure that humans can reach the moon and even beyond."
For Tanga and Hagedorn, however, relying on existing systems is no longer enough to deal with the risks of massive destruction posed by potential disasters such as climate change and nuclear war. They believe that the importance of the "Moon Ark" as a safe storage method for "backup copies" of life on earth is self-evident. Although there are differences between active and passive temperature control, the core goal of both is to build a "lunar ark" to protect the diversity of life. Tanga discussed this shared vision with the Smithsonian team via video conference last year.
Faced with doubts about the high cost and feasibility of the plan, both Hagedorn and Tanga remained optimistic and firmly believed that as long as the government provided clear support, the concept of "Moon Ark" would become a reality. Hagedorn cited the U.S. president's moon landing commitment in the 1960s as an example, emphasizing that the power of scientific and technological progress is sufficient to meet the challenges faced by the current plan.