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On April 11th, what would have been the first private spacecraft to land on the moon instead crashed onto its surface. Onboard was an info archive, human DNA samples, and thousands of water bears—microscopic animals that can survive almost anything 1/ wired.trib.al/Ni2es0g
Water bears, also known as tardigrades, can live through boiling water, some of the lowest temperatures in the universe, and blasts of radiation that would kill a human. They can also survive space 2/ wired.trib.al/Ni2es0g 
So, what? And, how? The water bear's toughness baffled scientists for decades. In 2017, researchers found an exclusively tardigradean protein that the creature produces, forming it into a glass bead 3/ wired.trib.al/Ni2es0g 3/ wired.trib.al/Ni2es0g
They can enter dormant states in which all metabolic processes stop and the water in their cells is replaced by a protein that effectively turns the cells into glass. Scientists have revived tardigrades that have spent up to 10 years in this state 4/ wired.trib.al/Ni2es0g
The spacecraft’s owners believe their payload is still intact, so it’s conceivable these little animals could be revived the next time humans set foot on the moon 5/ wired.trib.al/Ni2es0g
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