TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) – According to a scientist from the University of Arizona and his students, natural underground caves on the moon can be used to store frozen samples of the Earth’s species in order to protect biodiversity in the event of a global disaster.
Jekan Thanga, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, and five of his students presented a paper on the concept earlier this month at the IEEE International Aviation Conference, which was held virtually this year, reports the Arizona Daily Star.
Thanga said the underground biological repository will serve as a backup copy of frozen seeds, spores, sperm and egg samples from most Earth species. The samples would be safely stored in the caves carved by molten lava hundreds of feet below the lunar surface.
The caves, some of which are large enough to contain a 30-story building, can be reached within four to five days by rocket from Earth and have provided an undisturbed environment for the past three to four billion years, according to scientists.
The doctoral student at the university 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 of each animal, the lunar ark would be 50 monsters of each of the selected species in a high-tech archive manned by robots and powered by solar panels. The group has been researching ideas in the midst of the global disaster for at least seven years.
“There is nothing on earth. There is nothing so safe, ”Thanga said, adding that it serves as an insurance policy in the event of a global disaster.
Thanga estimates that it could take as little as five years and 15 space launches to create the repository.
Thanga also said it would be similar to that of the Svalbard Seed Bank, an existing repository in Norway that contains hundreds of thousands of plant samples. Instead, the one on the moon would contain as many as 1 million different seed packets.
The group hopes to send 6.7 million species to the moon, representing up to 90% of all known plants and animals, minus those that cannot be cryogenically preserved, he said. It is unclear what will happen to the monsters once on the moon.
“We want to save it for a time when we have the technology to (re) implement it,” he said. ‘Because it’s lost first, it’s lost forever. There is no way to get it back. ‘
So far, work on the idea has been funded by a grant from NASA. The group has announced plans to release more details as they do more research, including how the samples may respond to long-term storage in microgravity.
Díaz-Flores Caminero, a doctoral student who co-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.
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