I thought the news felt like a deja-vu
At this point it’s more an experiment on the limitations that these creatures can be pushed to in the Lunar environment.
It may spread life to other planets and systems, and this would mean that life has higher chance of survival no matter if humans are here or not.
If we look over the next 10 thousand years, we have more chances to have the planet survivability highly affected by a nuclear war, than to have tardigrades secretly building a spaceship and attacking us back in Space Wars style.
It's great if plants and animals spread to other planets, those who can survive will survive, and the others may mutate or adapt.
In the long-term, contamination is going to happen anyway due to humans planning to live there.
The concern is they'll make it harder to detect potential life on other planets (because of false positives) or even that they'll destroy alien life if it exists.
> Fortunately for Spivack and the Arch Mission Foundation, spewing DNA and water bears across the moon is totally legal. NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection classifies missions based on the likelihood that their targets are of interest to our understanding of life. As such, missions destined for places like Mars are subject to more stringent sterilization processes than missions to the Moon, which has few of the necessary conditions for life and isn’t at risk of contamination. In fact, Spivack isn’t even the first to leave DNA on the moon. This honor belongs to the Apollo astronauts, who left nearly 100 bags of human feces on the lunar surface before they returned to Earth.
and a separate agreement has countries that sign agree not to proliferate nuclear weapons to new countries. Israel, Pakistan, and India did not sign, and are therefore in compliance with that treaty also.
No, the Israelis did, if the container was breached, which it may not have been
edit: I’m curious what’s inaccurate about this answer, thats what the article says
