To the moon and back
Trees from Apollo 14 live on, including in Ariz.
If you could take something with you into space, what would it be? A photo of your family or a treasured piece of jewelry that has special meaning? In 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa had that decision to make. He was part of the team flying aboard Apollo 14 scheduled to make a lunar landing. Each of the three astronauts on the mission, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa, could take up to 12 personal items that weighed no more than 1.5 pounds.
To understand why Stuart Roosa chose what he did, you must know a little about his
background. In the early 1950s, Roosa was a smoke jumper who leapt from airplanes into areas where forest fires needed to be fought. He spent several years fighting forest fires with the U.S. Forest Service and came to love the beautiful trees he was trying to protect.
He later was an aerospace test pilot and eventually graduated from the Aviation Cadet Program at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona. He became a fighter pilot, and in 1966 was chosen as part of the astronaut class for the Apollo 9 mission. He served as part of the support crew for Apollo 9 but did not go into space.
In 1971, he was chosen as the command module pilot for Apollo 14 and became one of a few privileged astronauts who “slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings.”
Are you wondering what Roosa took aboard Apollo 14? Here are some clues: It was carried in a six-inch metal cylinder, it came from nature, and
it could fit in your cupped hands. What did he take? Around 500 seeds from native redwood, loblolly pine, sycamore, Douglas fir and sweet gum trees.
Stan Krugman, then staff director for Forest Genetics Research with the U.S. Forest Service, helped Roosa choose the species that would travel into outer space. Roosa’s background as a forest firefighter made him curious to learn what effects weightlessness would have on seed germination. An added bonus was that if the seeds sprouted when brought back to Earth, they could be given as gifts during the 1976 bicentennial celebration.
The three astronauts blasted into space on Jan. 31, 1971, on board Apollo 14. After orbiting the moon, astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell boarded the lunar module and landed on the moon. There, they set out a scientific station to collect data and picked up moon rocks to take back to Earth for analysis. A less scientific activity was Shepard hitting a few golf balls across the lunar surface.
Roosa and his cylinder of seeds stayed on board the command module, “Kitty Hawk,” and orbited the moon 34 times while waiting for Shepard and Mitchell to return from the moon.
After nine days in space, Apollo 14 returned to Earth. Roosa’s seeds were shipped to the U.S. Forest Service labs where the “moon trees” were germinated proving weightlessness had not affected their viability.
Some of Roosa’s moon trees were planted near national landmarks. A “moon tree” seedling sycamore was planted by Roosa and Krugman in Philadelphia’s Washington Square Park in 1976. The tree died in 2011 and was replaced with a second-generation sycamore from the original tree.
During 1976 bicentennial celebrations, moon trees were planted beside local government buildings, in national parks, at schools, and at colleges. Some were even given to foreign dignitaries. Moon trees were also planted to commemorate special occasions, such as Earth Day celebrations.
Unlike most government projects, no official records were kept as to where the moon trees were planted. Roosa died in 1994, with many locations of his moon trees still unknown.
In 2002, planetary scientist, Dave Williams, received an email from an Indiana teacher asking where some of the Apollo 14 moon trees were growing. Williams worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and was intrigued, since he had never heard of moon trees. He contacted the NASA history office and discovered there were indeed moon trees planted throughout the U.S. He began tracking them down and created a website listing their locations, dates planted and variety of tree. If you know of a moon tree not on his list, send a message to dave.williams@ nasa.gov.
Williams documented two moon trees planted in Arizona: a Douglas fir planted in 1976 at Flagstaff Junior High School that has since died, and a sycamore planted in 1976 near the University of Arizona Kuiper Space Science Building that is still living.
When I asked Dave Williams about his role in documenting the location of moon trees, he said, “Because of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 this year, I have been getting a lot of interest and emails with updates on the moon trees. I am amazed that even after all these years, I still occasionally hear about a new tree, so there are probably more out there! I’ve always liked the idea of something as firmly rooted in the Earth as a tree being the symbol of something as ‘un-rooted’ from Earth as going to the Moon.”
Today, second-generation moon trees are being grown and planted from first-generation trees. On Feb. 9, 2005, to honor the 34th anniversary of the Apollo 14 splashdown, a second-generation moon tree (sycamore) was planted at Arlington National Cemetery to honor Stuart Roosa.
At the Arlington moon tree planting for his father, Jack Roosa said that the Apollo 14 moon trees were the only living things to commemorate one of man’s most impressive achievements.
On this 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, America’s space program is being highlighted by the media, and there is a renewed interest in our country’s rich history of space exploration.
Roosa’s daughter, Rosemary, while attending a 2011 second-generation moon tree planting, stated that her father was a strong supporter of space exploration. She said she hoped the moon trees would serve as a reminder to Americans of the U.S. space program’s many accomplishments and serve as an inspiration for future generations to “reach for the stars.”
Happy gardening.