As warming sea temperatures and pollution continue to degrade the world's coral reefs at an unprecedented rate, scientists are investigating the feasibility of preserving them — in outer space.
The idea is to store a biorepository — a biobank that stores samples of biological material cooled to temperatures low enough it is essentially suspended in time — inside permanently shadowed craters on the moon, whose frigid temperatures scientists say would be suitable to preserve such a facility for hundreds of years. The samples, coral genetic material in this case, would be returned to Earth on-demand and reseeded in our oceans to restore living reefs.
