On February 5 , 1971 , crew members of NASA ’s Apollo 14 mission became the third Seth of astronauts to congeal fundament on the moonlight . This missionary work is perhaps most celebrated for Alan Shepard’sextraterrestrial golf sashay — Shepard hook a jury-rigged six Fe into the ejection seat and hit two balls out of the braggart ( and lowest - gravity ) grit cakehole in history . But Apollo 14 ’s legacy extend beyond golf game . Namely , it includes C of " Moon trees " planted down here on ground .
While Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked , golf , and performed studies on the moon for 33 hours , Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa stick around in lunar eye socket aboard theKitty Hawk . In his mob , Roosa kept over 400 seed for five unlike types of trees — Douglas Fir , Loblolly Pine , Redwood , Sycamore , and Sweetgum . Before becoming an astronaut , Roosa was a U.S. Forest Service smoke pinafore . Ed Cliff , the Chief of the Forest Service in 1971 , contacted Roosa to see if he ’d be up for bringing the seeds along with him as an experiment . The experiment was approved , and the hundred of seed stayed in the command module as it revolve the moonlight 34 time .
The seminal fluid ' long commute looked to be for naught , though , as their warehousing canister cracked clear during the astronauts ' decontamination procedures on Earth , blend all the sampling together . The seeds were thought to be unsalvageable , but two Forest Service stations bring off to successfully sprout nearly all of them . The sapling were founder to different state forestry organizations ( as well as other land and dignitaries ) as gifts . There are currently dozens of sleep with Moon trees planted around the state , some perhaps in park you see on a regular basis but had no idea were home to such well - traveled scene .
NASA has alist of all the bang locations of these trees , but there are many that went unaccounted for . There is an ongoing search for these incognito trees being run by NASA stargazer Dave Williams . If you have a jumper cable , contact him at dave.williams@nasa.gov .
[ More info here , from NASA ]
