Recently, two British researchers studied the capacity of water bears to withstand impact. They loaded two to three frozen water bears (species: Hypsibius dujardini) in cryptobiosis into a shaft in a nylon sabot and then used an air gun to fire them into the sand about half metre away. The speed of bullets ranges from 0.556 to 1 km/s. Afterwards, the researchers separated the water bears from the grains of sand. They checked whether these water bears could withstand the impact and come back to life from cryptobiosis.

It turned out that water bears could survive the impact up to the bullet speed 0.9 km/s, which is equivalent to an impact of 1.14 GPa. The researchers took twenty frozen water bears without having been subject to impact as control. These water bears all came back to life after warming.

Let us take the Moon as an example. The average speed of the impact object is 2.5 km/s, which is higher than that water bears could withstand. This would mean that the chance for the poor water bears to survive the Beresheet accident was slim.

The story doesn't end here. If you are curious about what's the point of the study, please stay tuned to our next episode!