A team of international scientists from the United States and Canada released a troubling finding: permanently shadowed regions at the Moon’s poles can keep microbial life alive for decades. The germs could threaten astronauts and future lunar operations. The results were shared at a recent Moon and Planets Conference as part of work by USRA, the Universities Space Research Association. The study highlights how the Moon’s shadowed craters act as cold traps, preserving traces of biology long after surface temperatures swing between extremes. — USRA researchers
York University and the University of Maryland researchers simulate Shackleton crater conditions, showing microbes could persist in shadowed lunar pockets and influence Artemis.
The lack of UV light, the perpetual darkness, and temperatures near minus 250 degrees Celsius form a near perfect freezer for biology, preserving microorganisms in stable states. This setup also slows degradation of organic molecules, effectively storing information about any life that once existed in these cold traps. — York University / University of Maryland teams
Bacteria can endure decades in dormant states, and some organic compounds may endure for millions of years in these conditions. In the simulations, microbial life forms showed surprising resilience, illustrating how PSRs could keep a record of past life and potential future contamination for long spans. — research team
The team emphasizes that people will almost certainly introduce microbes into shaded lunar regions. Crew habitats, rovers, and tools can host thousands to millions of microbes per square centimeter, and even thorough cleaning may not remove every organism. Robots designed to explore and collect samples can also carry trace contaminants, and ice analyses may yield misleading results about true biosignatures.
“Continuously shaded regions are the Moon’s archives,” one lead researcher warned. “If we pollute them, we will lose the keys to understanding the solar system.”
Earlier studies showed that earthly lichens could survive Martian conditions, underscoring the need for stringent planetary protection as exploration expands beyond Earth. The resilience of simple life in harsh environments continues to shape how missions plan sterilization, sampling, and the handling of icy materials on distant worlds.