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 16 was retrieved by the . They were safely aboard the "Ticonderoga" 37 minutes after splashdown. The Apollo 16 subsatellite (PFS-2) was a small satellite released into lunar orbit from the Service Module. Its principal objective was to measure charged particles and magnetic fields all around the Moon as the Moon orbited Earth, similar to its sister spacecraft, PFS-1, released eight months earlier by Apollo 15. "The low orbits of both subsatellites were to be similar ellipses, ranging from above the lunar surface." "Instead, something bizarre happened. The orbit of PFS-2 rapidly changed shape and distance from the Moon. In 2-1/2