On April 11, 2019, an Israeli probe named Beresheet attempted to land on the Moon; it was the first lunar landing attempt by a private mission and the first for Israel. The mission's goal was to create a sort of backup copy or archive of Earth. Included in the data carried by the spacecraft was a backup of life on Earth: 30 million pages of information in English—books, dictionaries, languages, and so on—as well as DNA samples from various individuals (specifically 25 people), although only one is publicly known: Nova Spivack, the mission's founder and leader.

The identities of the other 24 people who provided DNA samples remain unknown. The idea was that, in the future, these samples—housed in a sort of "ark" sent to the Moon—could be retrieved to create clones. While current technology makes this impossible, it might be feasible in the not-too-distant future; however, DNA samples exposed to cosmic radiation do not last more than 50 years—or perhaps 100 at most, depending on the level of protection (which is not well documented). The fact remains that the ark aboard the spacecraft also carried a colony of tardigrades; unfortunately, the craft crashed in the Sea of ​​Serenity, yet it is suspected that the tardigrade colony—or at least part of it—survived.

This does not mean that they are currently reproducing or colonizing the Moon; they remain there in a spore-like state until something wets them with liquid water. Although tardigrades are highly resistant to space conditions and radiation, that resilience applies to their dry, dormant form; to live, thrive, reproduce, and mate, they require water—which is why they are known as "water bears."

The point is that there are now terrestrial living beings—or at least organisms in a dormant state—on the Moon. They may not be the only ones; in the future, there could be many more. I am not referring to the humans traveling to the Moon, but to the organisms that will accompany them and remain there. On August 16, 2026, NASA released a statement titled "NASA Discovers That 'Human-Associated Microbes Could Survive at the Moon's South Pole.'" Researchers studied various organisms—bacteria and fungi that typically travel with us on our skin, in spacesuits, and within habitats—that could survive in a dormant state in the shadowed regions of the lunar south pole. This is precisely where upcoming missions are headed, as the current objective is to reach the lunar south pole, search for water and water ice, and establish a base there.

NASA scientists modeled conditions in three regions near the lunar south pole and discovered that various microbes common to human skin, as well as certain fungi, could survive—at least in a dormant state. These researchers identified survival niches of widely varying sizes, ranging from the floor of a crater spanning several square kilometers to something as small as an astronaut's bootprint. If located within a shadowed zone, those microbes or fungi could remain alive in a dormant state for some time, at the very least.