Scientists Want to Build A ‘Doomsday’ Vault on the Moon

A new biorepository would house cryopreserved cells, stored at temperatures so cold that biological activity is suspended.

It sounds like science fiction, but the challenges to executing it are extreme — from how to ensure there is enough genetic diversity in the stored samples to make repopulating the Earth viable, to the hefty price tag.

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

A competing team has proposed a repository that uses natural features of the moon to keep the samples cryogenic.

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

At the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, following the 2016 flooding, the facility’s architects acknowledged that the possibility of the permafrost melting, or such cases of extreme weather, had not been in their original building plans.

A spokesperson at Crop Trust , an organization that helps manage the vault, told Grist that the facility is “secure”.