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 catastrophe, according to a University of Arizona scientist and your students.
Jekan Thanga, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, and five of his students presented a paper earlier this month on the concept during the IEEE Aerospace Conference, which was held virtually this year, the Arizona Daily Star.
Thanga said the underground biological repository would serve as a backup for frozen seeds, spores, sperm and egg samples from most terrestrial species. Specimens would be kept safe inside caves sculpted by molten lava hundreds of feet below the moon’s surface.
The caves, some large enough to hold a 30-story building, can be reached with rockets from Earth in four to five days and provide an essentially unaltered environment over the past 3 to 4 billion years, the scientists.
University doctoral student Álvaro Díaz-Flores Caminero and undergraduate student Claire Pedersen were the main authors of the work. They said the idea came from the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, but instead of two of all the animals, the lunar ark stored 50 samples of each of the chosen species in a high-tech archive run by robots. and powered by solar panels. The group has been researching ideas in the midst of the global catastrophe for at least seven years.
“There is nothing like it on planet Earth. There is nothing so safe, ”Thanga said, adding that it serves as an“ insurance policy ”in the event of a global catastrophe.
Thanga estimates it could take just 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 deposit in Norway that contains hundreds of thousands of plant samples. Instead, the moon contained up to 1 million packets of different seeds.
The group expects to send 6.7 million species to the moon, representing up to 90 percent of all known plants and animals, except those that cannot be cryogenically conserved, he said. It is unclear what will happen to the samples once on the moon.
“We want to save it for a time when we have the technology to (re) deploy it,” he said. “Because once lost, it is lost forever. There is no way to get it back. “
So far, work on the idea has been funded through a NASA grant. The group has announced plans to publish more details as more research is conducted, including how samples may react to long-term microgravity storage.
Díaz-Flores Caminero, a doctoral student who wrote the first article on the concept, welcomes the challenge. “Multidisciplinary projects are tough because of their complexity. But I think it’s the same complexity that makes them beautiful, “he said.
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