![Thousands of tardigrades stranded on the Moon after lunar lander crash](https://d1tlrxy0mfxnyo.cloudfront.net/thumbnail/24/adf3e218-5534-465b-9002-dc5f42f184e2.png?width=649)
When you look up at the moon, there may now be a few thousand water bears looking back at you.
The Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed into the moon during a failed landing attempt on April 11.
In doing so, it may have strewn the lunar surface with thousands of dehydrated tardigrades, Wired reported yesterday (Aug. 5).
Though it didn't transport astronauts, it carried human DNA samples, along with the aforementioned tardigradesand 30 million very small digitized pages of information about human society and culture.
However, it's unknown if the archive — and the water bears — survived the explosive impact when Beresheet crashed, according to Wired.
[8 Reasons Why We Love Tardigrades]