Posted: 6/7/2024
'Moon Tree' takes root on East Campus
By Alexandra Coffelt
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's newest tree may just be the best-traveled member of the East Campus community. The sweetgum tree, planted on June 4, spent 25 days in space with NASA’s Artemis I mission during its time as a seed.
Forestry lecturer Ann Powers addressed a crowd of about 30 spectators from a sloped area of turf just east of UNL’s Hardin Hall and described the Moon Tree’s journey, as well as plans for its future.
An average sweetgum seed, Powers said, rides the wind for around 200 feet before it germinates. This sweetgum, affectionately called “Luna,” traveled some 1.3 million miles and completed three orbits around the moon.
Powers said she will eventually use the tree to introduce her students to concepts like seed dispersal, tree growth rates and changes in climate. Luna’s seed came from a mature sweetgum in central Louisiana, where its ancestors faced much milder winter conditions than Luna likely will in Nebraska.
"I’m a little concerned about that," Powers said. "But if it grows, it really will be a testament to that climate shifting and Nebraska's winters getting warmer."
UNL’s biological systems engineering department has plans to monitor the tree as it grows. Santosh Pitla, associate professor of advanced machinery systems, worked with Powers to apply for the Moon Tree.
His team will collect soil data and measure how well the tree grows and photosynthesizes compared to established sweetgums nearby.
"It has experienced a lot of gravity effects," he said, "There are many earth-bound sweetgum trees, we could look at their growth rates and look at the growth rates of this [one]."
According to NASA, 1,000 seeds went into space in late 2022 on an unmanned Orion spacecraft. The mission brought them within 80 miles of the moon’s surface, Powers said. In addition to sweetgums like Luna, Douglas fir, loblolly pine, American sycamore and giant sequoia seeds also made the lunar journey.
The sweetgum and sycamore seeds eventually sprouted under the care of the United States Forest Service at Charles E. Bessey Tree Nursery in Halsey, Nebraska. The nursery, named after the founder of UNL’s original forestry program, tended to the young trees for about a year before sending them to Moon Tree custodians around the country.
For Powers, continuing UNL’s forestry legacy while branching out into new frontiers has been equal parts exciting and surprising.
"I didn't think that my job studying trees and talking about trees would ever lead me to space,” Powers said. “It’s really interesting to see those connections that we have all over campus."
