The toughest animals on Earth may be alive on the Moon after surviving an Israeli spacecraft crash earlier this year, scientists suspect.

A payload of several thousand hardy tardigrades were on board the Beresheet probe when it suffered a catastrophic failure during its final descent on April 11.

Although the lander smashed into the ground at high speed, the Arch Mission Foundation, which sent up the creatures, believes their cargo may have lived.

Tardigrades are the world’s most indestructible species, with Oxford University estimating they will survive on Earth until the sun dies, some 10 billion years from now, after everything else has died out.

They are able to survive for up to 30 years without food or water and endure temperature extremes of up to 284F (150C), the deep icy waters of Antarctica and the frozen vacuum of space.

The Arch Mission Foundation wants to create a ‘backup’ Earth in the Solar System, so the spacecraft was carrying a nickel disk with 30 million pages of human knowledge, human DNA samples, and the tardigrades were attached by tape or sealed in the resin layers of the disk.