[rvnx]

"Concern" ?

It may spread life to other planets and systems, and this would mean that life has higher chance of survival no matter if humans are here or not.

If we look over the next 10 thousand years, we have more chances to have the planet survivability highly affected by a nuclear war, than to have tardigrades secretly building a spaceship and attacking us back in Space Wars style.

It's great if plants and animals spread to other planets, those who can survive will survive, and the others may mutate or adapt.

In the long-term, contamination is going to happen anyway due to humans planning to live there.

[martin-t]

The concern isn't Earth organisms evolving and attacking us.

The concern is they'll make it harder to detect potential life on other planets (because of false positives) or even that they'll destroy alien life if it exists.

[gryphonclaw]

Yeah, which is definitely a concern for a planet with the potential to host life, like Mars or Europa, but for a place where we are pretty much 100% confident life cannot exist, like the Moon, it's just not a concern. Tardigrades are tough little creatures, but even they will just enter a tun state in such a harsh environment (if they even survive).

[talldayo]

I mean, I get the enthusiasm for leaving the shit-heap marble we all collectively share with each other. But it would be a pretty embarrassing faux-pas to start introducing invasive species to the moon before we even understand what exactly lives on it.