The Isreali lunar lander, Beresheet, was carrying thousands of tardigrades—microscopic organisms that can survive in the harshest of environments, including space—when it crash landed on the moon back in April. (Wired)

Talking point: The tardigrades were in a dehydrated state, so there is no risk of the lifeform taking over the moon—they would need to be somewhere with an atmosphere in order to be rehydrated. The Beresheet would have been the first private spacecraft to land on the moon and would have made Israel the fourth country to achieve the feat, following the Soviet Union (now Russia), China and the U.S. The spacecraft was also carrying DNA samples, part of a “lunar library” which consisted of 25 layers of nickel engraved with information including primers on the English language and literature. The payload is believed to remain largely intact, since the heat generated from the crash is unlikely to have melted the nickel layers. At the time of the crash, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to try again.