"The Search For The Missing Moon Trees"

This is a pretty interesting piece, from a while back:

Any idea of whatever happened to the "Search For the Missing Moon
Trees?"--Jim Burns

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...es_020815.html

=A0
"The Search for the Missing Moon Trees"
By Tony Phillips

Scattered around our planet are hundreds of creatures that have been to
the Moon and back again. None of them are human. They outnumber active
astronauts 3:1. And most are missing.

They're trees. "Moon trees."

NASA scientist Dave Williams has found 40 of them and he's looking for
more. "They were just seeds when they left Earth in 1971 onboard Apollo
14," explains Williams. "Now they're fully grown. They look like
ordinary trees--but they're special because they've been to the Moon."

How they got there and back is a curious tale.

It begins in 1953 when Stuart Roosa parachuted into an Oregon forest
fire. He had just taken a summer job as a US Forest Service "smoke
jumper," parachuting into wildfires in order to put them out. It was
probably adventure that first attracted Roosa to the job, but he soon
grew to love the forests, too. "My father had an affinity for the
outdoors," recalls Air Force Lt. Col. Jack Roosa, Stuart's son. "He
often reminisced about the tall Ponderosa pine trees from his smoke
jumping days."

Thirteen years later, NASA invited Roosa, who had since become an Air
Force test pilot, to join the astronaut program. He accepted. Roosa, Ed
Mitchell and Al Shepard eventually formed the prime crew for Apollo 14,
slated for launch in 1971.

"Each Apollo astronaut was allowed to take a small number of personal
items to the Moon," continued Jack. Their PPKs, or Personal Preference
Kits, were often filled with trinkets--coins, stamps or mission patches.
Al Shepard took golf balls. On Gemini 3, John Young brought a corned
beef sandwich. "My father chose trees," says Jack. "It was his way of
paying tribute to the US Forest Service."

The Forest Service was delighted.

"It was part science, part publicity stunt," laughs Stan Krugman, who
was the US Forest Service's staff director for forest genetics research
in 1971. "The scientists wanted to find out what would happen to these
seeds if they took a ride to the Moon. Would they sprout? Would the
trees look normal?" In those days biologists had done few experiments in
space; this would be one of the first. "We also wanted to give them away
as part of the Bicentennial celebration in 1976."

Krugman himself selected the varieties: redwood, loblolly pine,
sycamore, Douglas fir and sweetgum. "I picked redwoods because they were
well known, and the others because they would grow well in many parts of
the United States," he explained. "The seeds came from two Forest
Service genetics institutes. In most cases we knew their parents (a key
requirement for any post-flight genetic studies)."

On January 31, 1971, Apollo 14 blasted off.

Only Shepard and Mitchell actually walked on Moon. On Feb. 5th they
landed the lunar module Antares in Fra Mauro--a hilly area where Shepard
famously launched his golf balls using a geology tool as a makeshift
driver.

Roosa remained in orbit as pilot of the mission's command module Kitty
Hawk. Inside his PPK was a metal cylinder, 6 inches long and 3 inches
wide, filled with seeds. Together they circled the Moon 34 times.

Apollo 14 was a success. Scientists were delighted with the mission's
geology experiments and they were eager to study the 95 pounds (43
kilograms) of Moon rocks collected by Shepard and Mitchell. Krugman was
just as eager to study the seeds.

"We had a bit of a scare," Krugman recalls.

During decontamination procedures, the seed canister was exposed to
vacuum and it burst.
The seeds were scattered and traumatized.

"We weren't sure if they were still viable," he says. Working by hand,
Krugman carefully separated the seeds by species and sent them to Forest
Service labs in Mississippi and California. Despite the accident, nearly
all of them germinated. "We had [hundreds of] seedlings that had been to
the Moon!"

Thirty-one years later, Krugman still sounds excited.

During the years that followed, the trees thrived as scientists watched.
"The trees grew normally," he continued. "They reproduced with Earth
trees and their offspring, called half-Moon trees, were normal, too."
(He notes, however, that DNA analysis wasn't routinely done in the early
'70's, and so the Moon trees weren't tested in that way. There might be
subtle differences yet to be discovered.)

Finally, in 1975, they were ready to leave the lab. "That's when things
got out of hand," he says.

Everyone wanted a Moon tree. In 1975 and '76, trees were sent to the
White House, to Independence Square in Philadelphia, to Valley Forge.
"One tree went to the Emperor of Japan. Senators wanted trees to
dedicate buildings. We even did some plantings in New Orleans because
the mayor there, Mayor Moon, wanted some," says Krugman. There were so
many requests that "we had to produce additional seedlings from rooted
cuttings of the original trees."

No one kept systematic records, notes Dave Williams. That's why the
whereabouts of the trees today are mostly unknown.

One of them went to a Girl Scout camp in Cannelton, Indiana, where 3rd
grade teacher Joan Goble found it 1996. (She knew it was a Moon Tree
because a sign said so. Most Moon trees were planted with ceremony;
there's usually a sign or plaque nearby that identifies them.) "My
students love it," she says. "It looks like an ordinary tree, but they
feel it's special anyway because of its trip to the Moon." Jack Roosa
has since become a pen pal of Goble's class, encouraging the students to
explore and learn as his father did.

When Goble contacted Dave Williams in 1996 to ask for more information
about Moon trees, "I was clueless," Williams admits. Like many people
who were young in the 1970's, Williams had never heard of such trees,
but he soon became an enthusiast. "I found one Moon tree right here at
Goddard near my office," he laughs. "I had no idea it was there."

Often that's how they're encountered -- by accident. Williams now
maintains a web site listing all known Moon trees. If you stumble across
one, contact Dave. He'll investigate the find and add it to the
collection if it's authentic.
Moon trees are long-lived, adds Krugman. The redwoods could last
thousands of years, and the pines have a life expectancy of centuries.
Indeed, they've already outlived Stuart Roosa and Al Shepard -- two of
the humans who took them to the Moon.

Says Jack, "I think my father always knew that these trees would serve
as a long-lasting, living reminder of mankind's greatest
achievement--the manned missions to the Moon."

Of course, if humans don't return soon, Moon trees could become the only
living things on our planet that have been to the Moon. That's probably
not what Stuart had in mind.

Jack, however, is optimistic: "These trees will be here 100 years from
now," he says. "By then I believe we'll be planting Mars trees right
beside them."

August 15, 2002, www.space.com

=A9 Copyright 2002-2005 Imaginova Corp.

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:56:40 -0500, (Jim Burns)
wrote:


This is a pretty interesting piece, from a while back:

Any idea of whatever happened to the "Search For the Missing Moon
Trees?"--Jim Burns

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...es_020815.html

*

More websites about moon trees:



http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary...moon_tree.html

http://starryskies.com/The_sky/event...oon.trees.html

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/20...-MoonTrees.asp

http://www.sierraclub.org/e-files/moon_trees.asp

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/sp...22/moon.trees/

http://www.ninety-nines.org/fof3.html

http://www.ga.wa.gov/News/newsrel05-22-03.htm

http://arboretum.arizona.edu/heritage_trees.html

http://home.att.net/~becky.cb/moontrees.htm

http://www.siec.k12.in.us/cannelton/moontree/whatmt.htm

http://www.siec.k12.in.us/cannelton/...e/moontree.htm

http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=110624

http://online.sd43.bc.ca/della/moon_trees.htm

http://www.lakelandschools.org/EDTEC...ages/goble.htm

http://www.lakelandschools.org/EDTEC...ges/goble3.htm

http://www.monterey.org/publicworks/...landmark2.html


Rusty