Fly me to the Moon

Apollo 14 was the third manned spacecraft where humans walked on the moon — it entered orbit on Feb. 4, five days after it launched on Jan. 31, 1971. On the crew: Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, and former US Forest Service smokejumper Stuart Roosa, who carried over 400 tree seeds as part of a joint NASA + USFS initiative.

Roosa and his five varieties of seeds — Douglas fir, loblolly pine, redwood, sweet gum, and sycamore — orbited the moon 34 times. Why? Scientists wanted to know whether the seeds would be affected by their time in microgravity, including whether they would look the same + reach the same heights as their Earth-bound counterparts.

Space oddity

Unfortunately, the container holding the seeds burst as Apollo 14 was decontaminated after landing back on Earth, and all of the seeds mixed together. Scientists thought they wouldn’t be viable. They were shipped to Forest Service labs anyway, where researchers found that they would, indeed, still germinate.

Not only did they sprout, but after 20 years there were also no measurable differences with trees whose seeds never left the ground.

The seedlings —”Moon Trees” — were planted at landmarks across the world. Many went into the ground during the US’s bicentennial in 1976 at sites like the White House, the NASA Kennedy Space Center, and university campuses + state capitols. Some were gifted to more cosmopolitan recipients, including the Emperor of Japan.

Tennessee ties

Four of the seedlings — two sycamores + two loblolly pines — were planted here in Tennessee in April 1976.

One sycamore was planted at Sycamore Shoals State Park in Elizabethton + the other is at The University of the South in Sewanee (about 45 minutes from Chattanooga).

The two loblolly pines were planted at the University of Tennessee Forestry Experiment Station in Knoxville + the Arnold Air Force Base in Tullahoma. Unfortunately, the tree in Tullahoma died two years after being planted. There is a plaque commemorating the tree inside the memorial park.

While almost all of the seeds were sent out, no official records were kept of where the trees ended up, so information has been pieced together by Moon Tree fans — about 80 of the trees have been tracked + verified so far. A second generation of Moon Trees, “half-moon trees,” has also been planted. Have a lead on a Moon Tree? Email that info to NASA.

Quiz

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