Arizona scientists suggest turning the moon into the Earth’s lunar deposit

TUCSON, Arizona (AP) – The Moon’s natural underground caverns could be used to store frozen samples of Earth’s species to protect biodiversity in the event of a global disaster, according to a University of Arizona scientist and his students.

Jekan Thanga, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, and five of his students presented a paper earlier this month on the concept at the IEEE Aerospace Conference, which took place this year, the Arizona Daily Star reported.

Thanga said the underground biological repository will serve as a backup copy of frozen seeds, spores, semen and egg samples from most species on Earth. The specimens would be kept safely inside the caves carved by molten lava hundreds of meters below the surface of the moon.

The caves, some large enough to house a 30-story building, can be reached by rocket from Earth in four to five days and provide an essential undisturbed environment in the last 3 to 4 billion years, people said. science.

The doctoral candidate Álvaro Díaz-Flores Caminero and the undergraduate student Claire Pedersen were the main authors of the paper. They said the idea came from the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, but instead of two from each animal, the lunar ark would store 50 samples of each of the selected species in a high-tech archive equipped with robots and powered by solar panels. . The group has been researching ideas against a global catastrophe for at least seven years.

“There is no such thing on planet Earth. There is nothing as sure, “Thanga said, adding that it serves as an” insurance policy “in the event of a global catastrophe.

Thanga estimates it could take up to five years and 15 space launches to create the warehouse.

Thanga also said that it will be similar to that of Svalbard Seed Bank, an existing deposit in Norway, which holds hundreds of thousands of plant samples. Instead, the one per month would hold up to 1 million different seed packets.

The group hopes to send 6.7 million species to the moon, accounting for up to 90 percent of all known plants and animals, minus those that cannot be cryogenically preserved, he said. It is unclear what will happen to the tests once a month.

“We want to keep it for a while when we have the technology to (re) implement,” he said. “Because once lost, it is lost forever. There is no way to recover it. ”

So far, work on this idea has been funded by a grant from NASA. The group announced plans to release more details as it conducts more research, including how the samples could react to long-term storage in microgravity.

Díaz-Flores Caminero, a doctoral student who wrote the first paper on the concept, welcomes the challenge. “Multidisciplinary projects are difficult due to their complexity. But I think the same complexity is what makes them beautiful, ”he said.