The brain of those creatures are tiny. No scientists are handholding them as they grow up.
Yet they manage to search vast areas for food, learn new ideas like stealing from shops and tourists and even as you mention - self replicate.
Yes, while AI is improving we are orders of magnitude away from replicating animals.
My point is it seems we are still quite a few steps behind.
To the former, I always assumed there were in flight adjustments after launch. Elon's roadster had inaccurate calculations, I heard they were off by like 2%. I assumed the moon landing was similar.
How many tons of steel?
And it isn't even selv-replicating.
As impressive as the moon landing is it is a totally different thing (and has very little to do with AI.)