Tiny tardigrades, also known as moss piglets, were on board the lander that crash into the moon in April

They were supposed to be the moss piglets who boldly went where no moss piglet had gone before.

Alas, an astronomer has said that the colony of hardy bugs that crash-landed on the moon in April, hailed this week as noble emissaries of the Earth, were almost certainly not the first.

Instead, contamination from lunar landers, astronaut waste and even asteroids makes it likely that they will be welcomed to Earth’s satellite by other eight-legged compatriots who made the same journey long ago. Lunar life may not be as rare as we think.

An Israeli lunar lander crashed into the moon last April. On board were thousands of microscopic creatures known as moss piglets or tardigrades. These are one of the oddest organisms known to