Scientists Plan ‘Doomsday’ Vault on Moon

A new biorepository could be built on the moon to store plant, animal, and microbial samples.

Cryopreserved cells likely can remain alive for hundreds of years , with the aim that the collections could one day be thawed and used to recover DNA and entire organisms.

If made a reality, the moon vault would help secure the biodiversity of the world’s ecosystems in case of an Earthbound catastrophe.

A team at the University of Arizona has been devising a system to store biological samples on the moon.

The team would use solar panels and batteries to provide the power to push temperatures inside a lava tube down to the deep freeze needed to create their lunar ark.

To passively maintain a perpetual deep freeze, they’ve proposed building the repository on the south pole of the moon where, inside some craters, temperatures can be as low as 196 degrees centigrade.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built into a mountain as a fortress to safeguard the world’s seeds, was flooded in the fall of 2016 after a flood breached the entrance tunnel of the vault.

Thanga argues that the more sensible thing to do, then is to create the ark in a lava tube.

The final price tag will nonetheless end up in the billions .