The vault would rely on its remoteness from human-made disasters and the Moon's naturally low temperatures to cryogenically preserve animal skin samples.
Alarmed by the growing number of species facing extinction here on Earth, a group of scientists believe the answer lies in building a large freezer for animal DNA on the Moon.comes courtesy of a team that includes Mary Hagedorn, a research scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. Hagedorn has previously worked on successful efforts tothreatened coral species through cryopreservation.
The plan calls for a bank of cryogenically frozen animal skin and tissue to be built up over time, eventually expanding to include plants. A wide range of fauna and flora samples would be needed, each of which would play a role in building “ There would be many challenges to completing such an ambitious project, they acknowledged, including building packaging to protect the DNA from radiation, finding reliable transport to particularly hostile portions of the Moon, and the uncertain effect lengthy exposure to microgravity could have on the samples.
Another barrier is cost. The group didn’t put a price tag on the lunar cryostorage facility, other than noting that, on a scale of one to five, in which one is the cheapest and five is the most expensive, building such a facility on Earth would be a one and doing it on the Moon would be a five. On the flip side, the cost of maintaining a repository on Earth is a five while on the Moon, it’s a two.
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