An Israeli lunar lander which crashed on the moon a few months ago may have seeded the surface with thousands of microscopic animals.

Beresheet, the lunar probe co-developed by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, failed in its attempt at a soft landing on the moon’s surface in April, instead hitting the moon at high speed.

In addition to a lunar library of 30 million pages of data, the mission’s payload included thousands of tiny tardigrades.

Also known as water bears, tardigrades can grow to up to 1.5mm in size. They are among the most resilient creatures ever discovered, able to survive extreme heat, acute lack of water, radiation and dehydration. A decade ago, it was also proved that they could survive exposure to outer space.

The tardigrade’s survival technique involves shrinking down into a pod-like state, effectively going into hibernation.

While any tardigrades which might currently be on the moon would remain in an inactive state due to lack of atmosphere or water, it is possible that if any of them were subsequently brought back to earth, could be revived.

About the Tardigrades in the Lunar Library: Some are sealed in epoxy with 100 million human, plant and microorganism cells. Some are encapsulated onto the sticky side of a 1cm square piece of Kapton tape that is sealed inside the disc stack. They cannot reproduce on the Moon.

— Nova Spivack (@novaspivack) August 6, 2019

Nova Spivak, the founder of the Arch Mission Foundation which created the lunar library carried by the lander, tweeted that some of the tardigrades “are sealed in epoxy with 100 million human, plant and microorganism cells.”

“Some are encapsulated onto the sticky side of a 1cm square piece of Kapton tape that is sealed inside the disc stack,” he continued, but stressed that the creatures “cannot reproduce on the Moon”, something reiterated by the Arch Mission Foundation itself.

“The Moon is a Type 1 destination with no atmosphere”, the foundation said.

“We are mindful of Planetary Protection. We would not send anything to a location with an atmosphere. The Moon already has nearly 100 bags of human waste left by Apollo astronauts, plus a small plant landed by China.”

The AMF also used the opportunity to inform the public that they plan to send another lunar archive to the moon in 2021, offering people the opportunity to pay to have their own memories and DNA included.

However, the organisation is unlikely to be using an Israeli lander to do so. Despite the SpaceIL announcing days after the failure of the first lander that they would attempt to land another craft on the moon’s service, in June the organisation said they had decided not to reattempt the mission, stating that a moon landing was “not a sufficiently great challenge.”