Moon tree Moon tree Moon trees are trees grown from 500 seeds taken into orbit around the Moon by Stuart Roosa during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. As the Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 14 mission, and as he had been a smoke jumper, Roosa was contacted by Ed Cliff, who was the Chief of the Forest Service at the time, and who proposed the idea of taking the seeds along. Seeds for the experiment were chosen from five different types of trees: loblolly pine, sycamore, sweetgum, redwood, and Douglas fir. The seeds orbited the moon, but were not landed
Apollo 17 19, the crew jettisoned the no-longer-needed SM, leaving only the CM for return to Earth. The Apollo 17 spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere and landed safely in the Pacific Ocean at 2:25 pm, from the recovery ship, . Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt were then retrieved by a recovery helicopter and were safely aboard the recovery ship 52 minutes after landing. The command module "America" is currently on display at Space Center Houston at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The ascent stage of lunar module "Challenger" impacted the Moon December 15, 1972 at 06:50:20.8 UT (1:50 am EST),