James Smith
Plants and animals are dying at a rate unprecedented on Earth. Some scientists are looking for a solution in outer space.
The idea is called a lunar biorepository, a facility that maintains and stores plant and animal cells. But instead of on Earth, this would be on the moon.
Why the moon?
“There is no place on Earth cold enough to do this,” explained Mary Hagedorn, a senior researcher at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
Hagedorn has spent the last two decades studying and theorizing modern ways of trying to save coral reefs. She specializes in cryopreservation, the process of freezing biological materials such as animal cells at such a low temperature that it allows them to remain frozen but alive for hundreds of years.
“Let’s imagine that, unfortunately, climate change has destroyed 90% of the Great Barrier Reef. Well, in 100 years, we will be able to give them all that diversity back,” said Hagedorn.
Your inspiration is Arctic Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway It is a biorepository that keeps seeds at just below 0 degrees Fahrenheit due to the natural temperature of the permafrost. The low temperature and humidity levels in the vault keep the seeds viable for long periods of time.
“Svalbard did a great job of saying, ‘OK, we need to preserve seeds. Everything on Earth depends on seeds. And how are we going to do that?'” Hagedorn said.
Hagedorn and his team want to do something similar with animal cells, but they need colder temperatures. At the lunar poles, where deep craters are shadowed, temperatures reach minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit or colder.
Preserving these animal skin cells, called fibroblast cells, allows scientists to turn them into sex cells, which is how they clone animals in the laboratory.
In addition to threats and endangered animals such as the African elephant, green sea turtle and big cats, the Zoo team proposes that the lunar biorepository will initially include a number of animal species that serve different purposes, including:
- Those that modify their environment, such as corals, beavers, woodpeckers and earthworms.
- Pollinators that support food production, such as bees, moths and bats.
- Animals that live in extremely hot, cold, or acidic environments, such as monarch butterflies, polar bears, and nematodes.
- Organisms that support the web of life on Earth, such as zooplankton, boreal trees and mosses.
Cryopreserved human cardiac stem cells also was recently sent to the International Space Station.
Challenges in space
As a test, the zoo collected 10 specimens of the Starry Goby, a fish found in Kane`ohe Bay, Hawaii. The vision is for these cells to be sealed in cryogenic packaging and tested in space-like conditions on Earth, followed by a test on the space station.
How the Smithsonian plans to create cryopreserved cells and test them in space:
Teams from the National Science Foundation’s National Ecological Observatory Network also collect nearly 100,000 animal cell samples every year at 81 sites. NEON’s goal is to expand the cell types used in cryopreservation to include sperm and oocytes, which are found in ovaries.
While a lunar biorepository may be a promising idea for preserving Earth’s biodiversity, there are challenges to this program.
The researchers said that one of the most difficult problems presented by a lunar biorepository would be exposure of samples to radiation. Radiation countermeasures can include antioxidant cocktails as well as providing physical barriers such as water, lead or cement to block radiation.
Temperatures on the Moon’s surface, which make freezing possible, are also a concern.
Certain areas of the Moon can reach more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit during the lunar day, which is equivalent to about 14 days on Earth. The much colder temperatures in the craters of the North and South Poles can make it difficult to transport biomaterials.
Another challenge is that these areas, known as “permanently shadowed regions,” are believed to have large amounts of ice, conditions that would make human monitoring extremely difficult.
The long-term effects of microgravity on cells could also pose a problem.
Some say looking for a solution on the Moon shouldn’t be the No. 1 priority.
“I don’t think it’s the right idea for now,” said Noah Greenwald, director of endangered species at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“I think we really need to focus on protecting the natural world more so we don’t lose species in the first place,” he said.
A decades-long effort
Hagedorn isn’t the only scientist working to create a biorepository on the moon.
In 2021, researchers at the University of Arizona proposed a concept to send an ark full of 335 million sperm and egg samples to the moon.
“They are engineers,” Hagedorn noted. “So more biologists are coming into this. We know how to cryopreserve. We’ve started sampling. But they have a great sense of how to use robots.”
Hagedorn said this is a decades-long effort and that developing a lunar biorepository will require collaboration from a range of nations, agencies, cultural groups and other interested parties.
Greenwald said that although climate change is finally getting the attention it deserves, the extinction crisis It’s right there with that.
“Species are the building blocks of ecosystems. They clean our air, they clean our water, they moderate our climate, they cycle nutrients. We should all be very concerned because the fact that we are losing species at such a rapid rate really reflects the degradation of the ecosystems on which we depend,” said Greenwald.
