British space agency is hunting ‘moon trees’ grown from seeds shipped on Apollo 14 lunar mission

The seeds – loblolly pine, sycamore, sweet gum, redwood, and Douglas fir – had traveled with Stuart Roosa, one of three NASA astronauts on the mission and a former US Forest Service paratrooper firefighter, sealed in small plastic bags stashed in a metal canister in his personal luggage. They were part of an experiment to see how seeds reacted to the space environment.

Steve Miller, vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society and a professor at University College London, believes some of these seeds or seedlings ended up in The United Kingdom. He wants to know what happened to them, just like the UK Space Agency.

His search began after asking a popular BBC radio show “Gardener’s Question Time” about a suitable horticultural way to mark the 200th anniversary of the Royal Astronomical Society, celebrated in 2020.

Panelist and gardener Christine Walkden suggested looking for the trees grown from the moon seeds she believed were planted in the UK and getting a cutting from one of them. However, no evidence has been found that they exist in the UK.

Two potential recipients, Kew Gardens in London and the arboretum at Jodrell Bank, the UK’s premier space observatory, have no data on the seeds supposedly coming to the UK, Miller said.

He is now appealing to the public for any clues.

In the United States, many of the seeds were given away to state forestry in 1975 and 1976 to be planted as part of the country’s bicentenary. According to NASA, a loblolly pine was planted in the White House. Trees have also been planted in Washington Square in Philadelphia, in the International Forest of Friendship at Valley Forge, and at various universities and NASA centers.

Miller has been able to track down a “half moon tree” that arose from a cutting of one of the planted moon trees in the United States. The crescent tree grows in a private garden in the village of Flamstead in the Chiltern Hills north of London. The RAS has been promised to cut that tree down before its bicentenary.

Apollo 14 astronauts pose for a group portrait during a pre-launch press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Left to right: Edgar J Mitchell, Alan B Shepard and Stuart A Roosa.

“We are incredibly grateful for that,” said Miller. “But we still want to know if any Apollo 14 seeds came to the UK, and – if so – what happened to them?”

The tree seeds on the Apollo 14 mission were not part of a systematic experiment. When Apollo astronauts went to the moon, they were allowed to bring a handful of personal items. One of the astronauts, the late Alan Shepard, picked up golf balls and became the first person to play golf on the moon.

His crewmember, the late Roosa, decided to take something in honor of American forests, a tribute to his past as a smoke hunter – someone who skydives in remote wilderness areas to extinguish wildfires.

Scientists later, however, were eager to study the seeds, as few experiments had tested the effects of space on botanical specimens at the time. The Forest Service has studied the genetic structure of the seeds and whether they would germinate and grow normally. (They did.)

Planting a tree on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo program at NASA on April 22, 2009 at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC.  The tree was grown from a second-generation seed from seeds that had flown to the Moon and returned to Earth in 1971 by the Apollo 14 crew.
Since then, other seeds have made the journey to space and successfully germinated. In 2015, 2 pounds of salad seeds spent six months aboard the International Space Station and were successfully planted back on Earth – although they grew more slowly than their counterparts that did not leave Earth.

There are also seven apple trees in the UK that have gone on a mission to the space station. The UK Space Agency grew the seeds of the tree that inspired Isaac Newton to discover gravity.

“By sending seeds to space, we can understand the effect of the unique environment on the biological composition of seeds. Understanding the effects of space on non-germinated seeds will be vital for future space missions, including when we try sustain human life beyond Earth, ”Libby Jackson, Human Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, said in a statement.

“Space has a great way to inspire people. We saw that excitement when space trees grown from the seeds of Newton’s apple tree were planted on our soil. come and what has become of them. “

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