This is a short and rather sweet post, reminding us of some events that unfolded last August in space. More specifically about a spacecraft crash that had the most original consequences of any lunar mission ever: installing life on the moon.
The israeli craft Beresheet would have carried out the first ever lunar expedition on private funding. Only that it lost control and crashed just seconds before landing. However, its cargo included an artifact carrying memorabilia from earth and designed to endure for millions of years. It contains nano-etchings of extensive terrestrial bibliography (and the guide to decoding it), a few human DNA samples, and thousands of hibernated animals of the most badass species on earth.
The most badass species on earth is the tardigrade, millimeter-long tactopoda discovered only years ago in Antarctica, although they live literally anywhere on the planet. They have a baffling and weirdly cute appearance, they can withstand the most extreme conditions and they can enter a state of indefinitely long hibernation; biologists have revived them from a thirty-year-long suspension but for all we know it could last millions of years; which matches the lifetime of their protective case on the moon.
After the crash calculations showed that the artifact has most probably survived it. In that case the tardigrade astronauts are staying dormant, but they just became the strongest ambassadors of humanity into the future, whatever this might mean.
