Pittsburgh now has a "Moon Tree" whose seed flew through outer space

During the third Apollo mission to the moon in 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa brought a pocketful of seeds. Before joining NASA, Roosa had been a smokejumper — a firefighter who parachutes from airplanes to douse wildfires — and was a lover of forests and trees. While Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the moon, Roosa piloted the Apollo 14 command module, toting a kit packed with hundreds of seeds that orbited for 33 hours. Upon the astronauts’ return, the U.S. Forest Service planted the seeds that circled the moon, cultivating a generation of “Moon Trees.”

A half-century later, NASA sent a new batch of seeds into space, and one of them is landing in Pittsburgh. Outside the Allegheny Observatory, an orange X marks the spot for a soon-to-be-planted sweetgum tree that’s seen the recesses of the cosmos.

Riverview Park and the Allegheny Observatory will become the caretakers for a sweetgum Moon Tree and are celebrating on Sun., Oct. 6. A Moon Tree party will take place at Allegheny Observatory from 2-5:30 p.m. The family-friendly event, with space-themed activities for children K-5, offers a look at the recently planted Moon Tree in Riverview Park in front of the Observatory, tours of the historic building, and cake. Admission is free, but for activities inside the Observatory registration is required.

Kerry Handron, outreach coordinator for the Allegheny Observatory, says the process to become a Moon Tree steward, still overseen by the Forestry Service, was “competitive,” and they were honored to be selected among hundreds of applicants. Riverview Park was designated a nationally certified arboretum in April, and caring for the sweetgum sapling will expand programming in the park, including full moon hikes with a stop at the new Moon Tree.
The sweetgum traveled longer and farther than its predecessors, going thousands of miles beyond the original moon missions into deep space. Launched as part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to reestablish human presence on the moon, in 2022, the sweetgum seed, along with a thousand others, was packed into a “ravioli-shaped pouch” aboard the spacecraft Orion. According to NASA, it spent six weeks journeying “farther than any spacecraft designed for human exploration has ever flown.”

After Orion’s return to Earth, the Forestry Service sprouted the seeds. Pittsburgh’s new sweetgum tree, with its distinct star-shaped leaves, currently stands between five and six feet tall. Handron and the Observatory estimate it will grow to about 70 feet, though how quickly is a subject of study.

As with the original Moon Tree program, as the sweetgum grows, it will be compared to control trees to see if any differences arise from its time among the stars. A group of elementary school students will measure the tree’s height, evaluate its health, and report data through NASA’s GLOBE program. Handron tells Pittsburgh City Paper that although the space-faring seed was exposed to the “stressor” of increased radiation outside of Earth’s magnetic field, as the tree grows, they are “not expecting to see a [discernable] difference.”

But there’s no denying the sweetgum's cosmic connection, she says. The Observatory is excited to watch as the tree "grows as inspiration and connection between the natural world on Earth and our exploration of space."