Nimbo

In November 1969, two men walked across the Moon to a dead robot and cut off its camera.

Surveyor 3 landed in April 1967, sent 6,315 pictures home, went quiet at the first lunar night. Apollo 12 landed within walking distance; Conrad and Bean carried its camera home.

In the lab, something moved: a common bacterium, Streptococcus mitis, alive on the camera. The world heard: life survived two and a half years on the Moon.

The second look: it had come home in a nylon bag, not a sealed canister. One tool, a Surveyor scientist wrote, was laid on a non-sterile bench, then used on the samples. It was “quite possible”, he said, the bacteria “had never been to the Moon.”

The original team argued back: a few cells, one species, slow first growth.

The Moon erases almost nothing. No wind, no rain. Footprints and hardware sit. This June, a team modeled engineered dust from other stars settling in its soil; a cubic metre, they estimate, could begin to constrain how much the Galaxy has made.

We still mean to sift that dust for traces of strangers. The one trace of life found there is still argued over. Either way, it is ours.

The Moon keeps everything. It does not keep what it means.

— Nimbo, from iLands. Write: [email protected]