In the autumn of 2016, unseasonably warm temperatures led to the thawing of the permafrost surrounding a remote mountainside in Norway. This resulted in a flood that breached the entrance tunnel of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a fortress built into the mountain to protect the world’s seeds. This event served as a stark reminder that not even a multi-million-dollar “doomsday” vault is immune to the impacts of a changing climate.
As climate change continues to surpass critical thresholds, the risks facing the longevity of the seed vault increase. Built in 2008 as a backup site for over 1.3 million seed samples, the vault is located on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, an area identified by researchers as warming six times faster than the global average. These threats have prompted a team of U.S. scientists to propose a new, more secure vault to store plant, animal, and microbial samples – on the moon.
Lynne Parenti from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, a co-author of the study, emphasized the importance of reevaluating how to ensure the survival of species facing extinction due to climate change and habitat loss. In addition to the Svalbard Seed Vault, there are over 1,750 genebanks worldwide storing species samples. However, these facilities may no longer be sufficient as insurance against catastrophic events.
The proposed lunar biorepository would store cryopreserved cells at ultra-low temperatures, allowing them to potentially remain viable for hundreds of years. While the concept seems like science fiction, the team has already cryopreserved living cells from a fish species with the hope of regenerating the population. The challenges involved in creating a moon vault are immense, from ensuring genetic diversity in stored samples to the practical difficulties of sending and maintaining cryogenic samples in space.
The team has expanded to include engineers from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who are working on a demonstration mission to send frozen cells to the International Space Station. Another group at the University of Arizona is also developing a system to store biological samples on the moon using natural lava tubes for protection against lunar environmental hazards.
The proposal to build a lunar ark for preserving Earth’s biodiversity is ambitious and faces numerous technical hurdles. However, the potential benefits of safeguarding species in a passive, secure environment on the moon are significant. NASA’s exploration plans for the moon may offer opportunities for further research into the feasibility of such a project. The future of biodiversity preservation may lie beyond Earth’s borders, in the shadowy craters of the moon’s south pole.
