# Lunar Biorepository: Moon's Cold Craters to Save Species

*Science & Technology · Priya Nair · 2026-10-15*

## TL;DR

In 2024, scientists led by Mary Hagedorn proposed a lunar biorepository to store cryopreserved cells of endangered species in the Moon's permanently shadowed craters, where temperatures stay extremely cold. The concept is a proposal, not a built facility, and major engineering and ethical hurdles remain unresolved.

## Key facts

- The proposal, published in 2024, suggests storing frozen biological samples in the Moon's permanently shadowed craters.
- Mary Hagedorn, a researcher at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, is a lead author of the concept.
- Fibroblast cells from the starry goby fish were used in early cryopreservation experiments tied to the idea.
- Permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles stay cold enough that samples might survive without electricity.
- No lunar biorepository has been built, and the concept faces open questions about radiation, transport, and governance.

## Could the Moon Become Earth's Backup Drive?

Could the Moon one day hold frozen biological samples of Earth's endangered animals? That is the question researchers put on the table in 2024, and it is not as strange as it first sounds. New research suggests scientists could use naturally cold spots on the Moon, some of which have not seen sunlight for billions of years, to keep those samples frozen.

The idea has a name: the **lunar biorepository**. Think of it as a vault, except the freezer is the Moon itself. A team led by Mary Hagedorn of the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute designed the concept, and their paper appeared in the journal *BioScience* on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. The proposal calls for preserving animal skin samples containing fibroblast cells, the fibrous material that supports and connects other tissues and organs.

Why look up instead of down? Recent studies indicate that roughly 8 million species exist on Earth, and more than 1 million of them are threatened with extinction. In the Moon's polar regions, permanently shadowed areas such as crater bottoms have not seen sunlight for more than 2 billion years. Temperatures there generally stay below minus 196 degrees Celsius (minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit). That is cold enough to keep cellular material in a kind of suspended animation, and it comes free of charge.

The team is honest about the road ahead. They expect a working lunar biorepository to take decades, and the samples would need packaging for space transport plus storage that shields them from the Moon's high radiation levels. International cooperation and funding remain open questions. The team has already started research with the starry goby (*Asterropteryx semipunctata*), a blue-spotted carnivorous fish, to develop protocols for the project. The idea is bold. Whether the project sinks or swims, only time will tell.

## 8 Million Species, 1 Million Under Threat, and a Gap in the Iceberg

Recent studies indicate that roughly 8 million species exist on Earth. More than 1 million of them are threatened with extinction. That second number is the one that stops you cold, because it is not a distant abstraction. It is a count of living things we share the planet with right now, and it is climbing.

Here is the part that keeps conservation biologists up at night. The source flags a deeper worry: that 8 million figure may be only the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of species could vanish before anyone has even described them, named them, or written down a single thing about how they lived. You cannot protect a creature you never knew existed.

So why would anyone bother building a lunar biorepository at all? That is the question this whole idea answers. If we cannot save species in their natural habitats fast enough, the argument goes, the least we can do is freeze samples of them somewhere that stays cold on its own. A lunar biorepository is exactly that: a frozen vault of biological material, parked on the Moon, using the Moon's own frigid shadowed ground instead of a power-hungry freezer back on Earth.

The scale of the loss is what makes the vault worth imagining. More than 1 million species under threat is not a rounding error. It is a slow, grinding erosion of the only known living inventory in the universe, and the estimate of 8 million total species is itself a guess built on what we have managed to catalog so far.

That gap between what exists and what we have described is the real stakes. Every undescribed species that disappears takes its genetic information with it, permanently. No photograph, no tissue sample, no record. A lunar biorepository is one attempt to stop that from happening to everything, even the species we have not met yet.

## Mary Hagedorn's Team and the Fibroblast Cell Plan

Mary Hagedorn, a researcher at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, led the team that designed the lunar biorepository concept. Their paper appeared in the journal *BioScience* on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. It is not a rescue plan for living animals. It is a plan for what we might save if we cannot save them in the wild.

The idea rests on skin. Specifically, the team proposes preserving animal skin samples that carry fibroblast cells, the fibrous cellular material that supports and connects other tissues and organs in the body. Fibroblasts are the workhorses here, common enough to collect and sturdy enough to freeze. The whole process has a name: cryopreservation, which means freezing cellular material and leaning on the Moon's natural environment to create a kind of suspended animation. Nothing is alive in the usual sense. Nothing is gone either.

Why bother? The paper's own warning is blunt. Species and ecosystems, the authors write, face accelerating instability and extinction threats from human-driven factors, and those threats are moving faster than our ability to save these species in their natural habitats. Read that twice. The melting is outrunning the rescue.

The numbers behind that urgency are already on the table. Roughly 8 million species are thought to exist on Earth, and more than 1 million of them are threatened with extinction. The team treats those figures as a floor, not a ceiling, since many species could vanish before anyone names them.

And they are not waiting on the Moon to start. Hagedorn and her colleagues have already begun research using the starry goby, *Asterropteryx semipunctata*, a blue-spotted carnivorous fish, to develop the cryopreservation protocols the project will need. A fish, of all things, is the first test case for a vault meant for the whole planet.

## Why the Moon? Because Earth's Cold Storage Isn't Cold Enough

Here is the problem in one sentence: we know how to freeze cells, but we do not have a freezer that stays cold on its own. On Earth, cryopreservation works. You drop biological samples to cryogenic temperatures and they hold. The catch is keeping them there. Earth has no natural landscape cold enough to store frozen samples passively, so every degree of that cold has to be manufactured, powered and paid for. Compressors hum. Liquid nitrogen boils off. Generators fail. A lunar biorepository sidesteps all of it by parking the samples somewhere the cold is free.

That somewhere already exists. In the Moon's polar regions, permanently shadowed areas sit at the bottom of craters that have not seen direct sunlight for more than 2 billion years. Not decades. Not centuries. Billions of years of darkness, long enough that the cold has soaked into the ground itself. Temperatures in these regions generally stay below minus 196 degrees Celsius, which is minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit. That number matters more than it looks: it is roughly the temperature of liquid nitrogen, the same cold labs use every day to keep cells alive in suspended animation.

So the pitch from Mary Hagedorn and her colleagues is elegant in its simplicity. Rather than build and power a freezer on Earth, use the Moon's own shadowed craters to passively cool a long-term cryopreservation facility. The lunar biorepository would not need a power grid to stay cold. It would just need to sit in the dark.

There is a harder reason the team is thinking this way. If we cannot save species in their habitats, we might still save pieces of them. Cryopreserved samples can potentially be used for cloning, which means a frozen vial is not a farewell, it is a maybe. That is the whole wager of a lunar biorepository: not that we fix what is breaking, but that we keep a copy.

## The Long Road to a Lunar Biorepository

Mary Hagedorn and her colleagues at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute are the first to say it: a lunar biorepository would not happen quickly. The team behind the concept, published in BioScience on July 31, 2024, expects the work to stretch across decades before any frozen vault on the Moon becomes real.

Between here and there sits a stack of practical problems. Every sample would have to be packaged to survive the violence of a rocket launch and the vacuum of space travel. Once it arrived, it would need to be stored in a way that shields it from the Moon's high radiation levels, which would otherwise chew through delicate cellular material. Then there is the human side of the ledger: building something on the Moon would demand international cooperation and, just as stubbornly, a steady source of funding. Neither is guaranteed.

None of that has stopped the team from starting. They have already begun research using the starry goby (*Asterropteryx semipunctata*), a blue-spotted carnivorous fish, to work out the protocols the project would eventually need. It is a modest beginning, a fish in a lab standing in for elephants and tigers and every other species we might lose.

And yet the researchers remain hopeful. They believe a lunar biorepository is possible, even if the timeline reads in decades rather than years. Only time will tell whether the project sinks or swims.


## Frequently asked questions

**What is a lunar biorepository and how would it work?**

A lunar biorepository is a proposed storage facility on the Moon that would keep cryopreserved biological samples frozen using the Moon's naturally cold, permanently shadowed regions. Rather than relying on powered freezers, the facility would lean on the lunar environment itself to maintain the low temperatures needed for long-term preservation of animal skin samples containing fibroblast cells.

**Why is the Moon considered for storing endangered species' cells?**

Earth simply lacks natural places cold enough for passive cryopreservation storage, so keeping samples frozen here depends on technology and money. The Moon's polar craters offer natural cold instead. In permanently shadowed areas such as crater bottoms, some of which have not seen sunlight for more than 2 billion years, temperatures generally stay below minus 196 degrees Celsius (minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit).

**How cold are the permanently shadowed regions on the Moon?**

Temperatures in the Moon's permanently shadowed regions generally remain below minus 196 degrees Celsius, which is minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit. That threshold matters because it sits at or below the range needed for cryopreservation, allowing a lunar biorepository to cool its stored samples passively instead of depending on continuous power.

**Who is leading the research?**

A team led by Mary Hagedorn of the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute designed the concept. Their paper appeared in the journal BioScience on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. The proposal outlines both the benefits and the difficulties of building a cold cellular material repository on the Moon.

**What are the main challenges?**

The team points to several hurdles: samples must be packaged for space transport, stored so they are shielded from the Moon's high radiation levels, and backed by international cooperation and funding. Hagedorn and her colleagues estimate that implementing a lunar biorepository project would take decades, though they remain hopeful it is possible.

**What is the starry goby's role?**

The team has already begun research using the starry goby (Asterropteryx semipunctata), a blue-spotted carnivorous fish, to develop protocols for the project. Working with this fish lets the researchers test and refine the cryopreservation methods a lunar biorepository would eventually depend on.

**When might it become a reality?**

The researchers anticipate that a working lunar biorepository would take decades to realize. The concept was published in BioScience on July 31, 2024, and the team framed it as a long-term ambition rather than an imminent facility. Whether the project ultimately succeeds, only time will tell. Editorial note: Details that remain unconfirmed, including specific temperature figures and mission timelines, are presented here as reported or proposed rather than settled fact.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/lunar-biorepository-moon-s-cold-craters-to-save-species/