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Moon Trees Flourishing Across America GREENBELT, Maryland, September 23, 2002 (ENS) - The Goddard Space Flight Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is looking for its Moon Trees. There is one on the grounds of the White House, a loblolly pine. Another grows in the International Forest of Friendship on the outskirts of Atchison, Kansas, a sycamore. Another sycamore Moon Tree grows on the grounds of the Goddard Space Flight Center. Three redwood Moon Trees are flourishing on the campus of Humboldt State University.
A loblolly pine stands unmarked on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol Building in Montgomery, Alabama, planted in 1976, "as a permanent reminder of man's flight into space and its relationship to the forests of America," Alabama said in a statement. Moon Trees were planted in Brazil, in Switzerland, and presented to the Emperor of Japan. The whereabouts of several dozen moon trees are known, but Dr. David Williams of the Goddard Space Flight Center is asking anyone who knows the location of a Moon Tree, to send him an email at: dwilliam@nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov. The good news is that many Moon Trees are flourishing, but the bad news is that most of the trees grown from hundreds of tree seeds that orbited the Moon with the Apollo 14 space mission have not been located. Apollo 14 was launched on January 31, 1971 to undertake America's third lunar voyage. Five days later, says Williams, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon while Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, orbited above in the command module.
In small containers in Roosa's personal kit were about 400 to 500 tree seeds of five species that he took into orbit as part of a joint NASA/U.S. Forest Service project. The idea was to grow trees from these seeds and compare them with trees grown from seeds that had never left the Earth to study the effects of prolonged weightlessness on seed germination and seedling growth. But during the decontamination procedures after Apollo 14's return to Earth, Roosa's seed cannisters burst open and the seeds got mixed together and were presumed to be no longer viable. Still, Stan Krugman of the Forest Service, who was in charge of the Moon Trees project, had the seeds sent to the southern Forest Service station in Gulfport, Mississippi and to the western station in Placerville, California to attempt germination. Nearly all the seeds germinated successfully, and the Forest Service had some 420 to 450 seedlings after a few years, Williams explains. They were of five species - redwood, Douglas fir, sycamore, loblolly pine, and sweetgum.
Some of the seedlings were planted alongside seedlings of the same species that stayed on Earth, and their whereabouts are known. Some 30 years later there is "no discernable difference" between the Moon Trees and their controls, Williams says. But most Moon Tree seedlings were given away in 1975 and 1976 to state forestry organizations to be planted as part of the nation's bicentennial celebration. Col. Roosa died in 1994, and the Moon Tree he donated to the Siskiyou Smoke Jumpers Base in Oregon's Illinois Valley did not survive the closing of the base. The astronaut and his Moon Trees are commemmorated each year by the Illinois Valley Moon Tree Run, a charitable event. No list of the Moon Trees was ever kept nor was any systematic tracking made of the disposition of all the trees, and now NASA would like to know where they grow. Williams says, "They stand as a tribute to astronaut Roosa and the Apollo program." Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
Loblolly pine Moon Tree on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol Building (Photo by Skeeter Etheridge courtesy 
Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa (Photo courtesy NASA)
Sycamore Moon Tree on the grounds of the Goddard Space Flight Center (Photo courtesy NASA)