South Elementary School has been selected by NASA as one of the first to receive a “Moon Tree” seedling that has flown across space aboard the Artemis I mission. Currently, South Elementary School is the first educational institution in the state of CT to receive a Moon Tree seedling and will use this opportunity to promote science, technology, engineering and math within its classrooms.
“...[This] is an exciting moment in the history of space exploration,” stated Gabriella Brown, Science Teacher at South Elementary School. “For the first time in nearly 50 years, NASA is planning to return to the Moon, and to commemorate this new era of moon exploration they sent seeds to honor Stuart Roosa’s Moon Tree experiment from the Apollo 14 mission. I thought this would be a great opportunity to foster citizenship by connecting our children with the natural world and outer space by encouraging them to become environmental stewards and citizen scientists.”
On August 24, 2023, NASA announced that their NASA Next Gen STEM Department, in partnership with the USDA Forest Service, will begin accepting applications for education and community organizations to receive a living piece of spaceflight history. This piece of history will be in the form of one of 50 seedlings grown from a tree seed aboard NASA’s Artemis I mission. Each seed traveled thousands of miles beyond the Moon and spent four weeks in space before returning back to Earth. The mission, completed in late 2022, continues the original The Moon Tree project launched in 1971 when seeds were sent into space to study the effects of prolonged weightlessness on germination.
“NASA’s Artemis moon trees are bringing the science and ingenuity of space exploration back down to Earth,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in the NASA-issued press release on April 24. “Last year, these seeds flew on the Artemis I mission 40,000 miles beyond the Moon. With the help of the USDA, this new generation of Moon trees will plant the spirit of exploration across our communities and inspire the next generation of explorers.”
Over 1300 applications were submitted to NASA for review, with the first batch of trees sent to nearly 50 institutions nationwide. Recipients were chosen based on their tree care plans and proposals for implementation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Those selected would be eligible to receive one of five species of trees grown on the 2022 Artemus I flight, including sycamores, sweetgum, Douglas firs, loblolly pines, and giant sequoias.
In mid-April, South Elementary School was notified they had been selected as one of the first organizations to receive a seedling and is the first institution in CT to be a Moon Tree Steward. The sycamore tree seedling was received on April 26 and planted the following day, on Arbor Day, on the grounds of South Elementary School.
“We have many exciting plans to incorporate the Moon Tree into our student’s education across the district,” said Brown. “The beauty is that this journey can be applied in all subjects from data collection in math, to poetry in ELA, the history of moon exploration in social studies, exploring the seasonal growth changes in science, and much more. We’re looking forward to the development of a creative space in which children of all abilities can apply classroom lessons to create something real that is valued by others.”
