The animals – known as water bears – are the most durable and resilient animals on earth. There are 900 species of the animal and can be found anywhere in the world. The 1mm creatures can be boiled, frozen and radiated – but they will still be alive 200 years later.
And now the hard creatures, which can withstand the most brutal conditions, are said to be on the surface of the moon.
But experts say it is impossible to know if the Tardigrades will be able to suffer the harsh conditions of the lunar planet.
Israel’s Beresheet mission sent a host of scientific instruments to the including a swarm of the ‘water bears’.
They formed part of the ‘Lunar Library’ project, that was masterminded by serial entrepreneur Nova Spivack.
Tardigrades – the worlds toughest species – may be living on the surface of the moon (Image: GETTY)
The last picture taking by the Beresheet spacecraft before it crashed (Image: REUTERS)
Mr Spivack sent human DNA, 30 million pages of information and a host of tardigrades on-board the spacecraft.
But the mission failed – meaning they may now populate the moon’s surface.
But the barren landscape of the moon and no immediate aid plans could beat the resilient creatures.
As such, nobody knows if they have survived or not.
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People watch a screen showing a picture taken by the camera of the Israel Beresheet spacecraft of the moon surface as the craft approaches, before it crashed on the moon (Image: GETTY)
The ultra-hard animals have an ability to enter a dormant phase, which causes all metabolic processes to halt and sees their cells effectively turn to glass.
If the cells are hydrated in a suitable environment, the animals can effectively be reborn.
Tardigrades have been revived this way after ten years in the dormant phrase and it is not known how long the process is viable for.
Israel was unsuccessful in its attempt to become the first country to land a private spacecraft on the moon.
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People watch a screen showing explanations of the landing of Israeli spacecraft, Bereshee (Image: GETTY)
Tardigrades can withstand the toughest conditions – but can they survive the moon’s surface? (Image: GETTY)
Beresheet – roughly translated to Genesis, or “In the Beginning” – was carrying a set of tiny disks – weighing just 3.5 ounces (100g), around half the weight of a tennis ball, that contained 30 million pages of documents. (16)
The first layer of disks is visible to the naked eye and can be viewed with a 100 times magnification microscope.
That particular layer contains 1,500 pages of text, images, logos and other data.
The spacecraft itself was destroyed during the attempt, when it crash landed on to the moon, leaving the craft completely destroyed.
A timeline of the Apollo moon landing in 1969 (Image: EXPRESS)
But creators of the “Lunar Library” – which was designed to be indestructible – say it might have survived.
Co-founder Mr Spivack told Mashable after the mission failed to land: “We have either installed the first library on the moon or we have installed the first archaeological ruins of early human attempts to build a library on the moon.
“When you look at the Moon from now on, realise there is a lost library there containing Wikipedia, 30,000 books, 5,000 languages, and the history of the world.”
The craft contained the bible and an Israeli time capsule, as well as a copy of David Copperfield’s magic secrets.
SpaceIL’s mission to the moon failed (Image: TWITTER/@TEAMSPACEIL)
Other documents include technical instructions detailing the scientific and engineering knowledge that’s required to access, decode and understand the digital information located further down in the Lunar Library.
A copy of Wikipedia in English, as well as Israeli history and data from the Long Now Foundation, a linguistic guide to 5,000 languages, was also included.
The Lunar Library contained around 200GB of data after decompression.
The Lunar Library’s contents would then take between 12 and 20 hours to download via an average home high speed cable broadband connection.