COLLEGE STATION, Texas — A piece of the Apollo 14 voyage to the moon is now on the Texas A&M University campus.
Jan. 31 – Feb 9, 2021 is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 14 Mission. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked the moon, while Stuart Roosa orbited around in a command module in 1971.
Packed in Roosa's personal kit were hundreds of tree seeds. Once they got back to earth, the seeds were germinated by the Forest Service. Those seeds are known as moon trees were planted around the United States to celebrate the mission.
Texas A&M Forest Service has a genetic copy of an original loblolly pine moon tree whose seed journeyed to the moon and back aboard Apollo 14.
"When I got here the first thing I had to do was touch the tree because those are seeds that went to the moon," said Mike Fossum, the vice president of Texas A&M University, the chief operating officer at the Galveston campus and former astronaut. "It's a tangible thing and in a very unlikely place, in a very different way."
The tree is planted at the gardens at Texas A&M University near the AgriLife Center.
Texas A&M Forest Service hopes it will serve as an inspiration to others of what is possible.
"There's going to be astronauts coming here often to see this tree because it means so much to them and it ties them back to their roots in the Apollo program," said Tom Boggus, the director for the Texas A&M Forest Service.