The strange story of bears on the Moon

The history of spaceflight contains many incredible, inspiring stories. And, sometimes, it goes badly wrong. These are those stories.

The possibility of life on other planets has fascinated humans for probably longer than we’ve known what planets are. But life exists beyond Earth; it’s now undeniable.

This idea isn’t a scientific theory or a YouTube video of bizarre claims. We’re not even talking about astronauts orbiting our planet or living on the International Space Station.

But these organic, carbon-based lifeforms don’t regard Earth with envious eyes. This is the strange story of the bears on the Moon.

In 2007, the XPrize — with a little sponsorship from Google — set out to make commercial space exploration “viable”, with its website offering a noble aim:

To spur affordable access to the Moon and give space entrepreneurs a legitimate platform to develop long-term business models around lunar transportation and to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, space explorers and adventurers to enter the STEM fields.

To win the $20 Million grand prize, the victorious team needed to complete several challenges on the Moon’s surface — including soft landing a robotic spacecraft, travelling 500 meters, and transmitting high-definition video and images back to Earth. All before 2012, or 2014 to take home the pocket money prize of $15 Million.

Proving more difficult than first expected, and the XPrize deadline was extended — to 2015, then to 2016, and onwards to 2017 if teams could show they had a secured contract for launch.

Israeli non-profit Space IL started shaking things up in 2015. With a contract for a SpaceX rocket to take their spacecraft to the Moon, they were the best hope to claim the jackpot.

Despite the jackpot prize going officially unclaimed in 2018, SpaceIL was continuing development.

Launching the bold Beresheet (from the Hebrew phrase meaning ‘In the beginning’) spacecraft aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket on February 22, 2019, it was bearing the usual fare in scientific equipment.

Beresheet was hailed as “a new era in spacecraft” and promising to smash records as the first Israeli spacecraft to travel beyond Earth orbit. Aiming to be the first privately-funded spacecraft to land on the Moon, it was the first time a Falcon 9 rocket had sent anything on a lunar journey.

Texan not-for-profit organisation, the Arch Mission Foundation, also had its hopes pinned on Berehseet.

Distributing libraries of Earth’s info around the solar system, Arch Mission included with Beresheet tens of millions of pages of archives containing scientific and cultural knowledge in various languages, samples of human DNA, and thousands of living creatures from Earth.

Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are found in every climate on Earth in the most inhospitable conditions. They survive temperature extremes, extreme pressures, air deprivation, dehydration, starvation — and, in 2007, Tardigrades survived the vacuum of space and cosmic radiation.

They were a natural choice for the Beresheet’s Lunar Library.

On April 4 2019, Beresheet successfully reached the Moon. A week later, shortly before Midnight, it started its landing process, firing its engines for a soft lunar landing.

The spacecraft’s gyroscope failed, the engines shut off, the lander slammed into the Moon, and it scattered its lunar library across the lunar surface.

The microscopic, multicellular, almost indestructible, dehydrated water bears remain peaceful in the Sea of Serenity.

Tardigrades need water and an atmosphere to thrive — both things the Moon is short on — but they can survive for a decade or more in their current state.

Making them the only confirmed living organism on another world.