To the moon and back

In an empty classroom in the agriculture building at American Falls High School, plant sciences teacher Bret Kindall is mentoring student Brianna Morales about what to expect as she will be ceremoniously planting her moon tree. 

The Moon Tree program started in 1971 as a collaboration between agencies when former USDA Forest Service smokejumper-turned-astronaut Stuart Roosa packed hundreds of seeds from five species in his personal kit aboard the Kitty Hawk on NASA’s Apollo 14 mission, the third lunar landing mission, at the request of then Forest Service Chief Ed Cliff. 

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The latest flight of seedlings is a second generation of the program hitching a ride on the Artemis I mission to test the ability of the Orion capsule to orbit the moon. The seeds traveled 43,000 miles past the moon and back, spending about four weeks in space. 

Morales and Kindall spent part of the morning gathering tools, digging an appropriate-sized hole, and preparing Brianna to speak in front of 20 teachers who know her best for being one of the quietest students on campus. 

“I have had her in four or five classes in three years and she’s not said a ton of words to me,” Kindall said. “But as soon as we started talking about the Moon Trees, I have heard her say more words in those few conversations than she has said in all three years.”

The small ceremony is the first of many presentations Morales is expected to make in the next year as her senior project will include coordinating with elementary schools in the area and teaching them about the program.

“We plan to show (the tree to) the kids we’ll bring and even students at our school, and they could get ideas from it, they could be inspired, and they can be more educated on plant science and space,” Morales said.

Morales is in Kindall’s plant science classes because there aren’t really a diversity of courses in astrophysics here in the rural, agricultural, and bordering-the-southeast-Idaho-desert community of American Falls, Idaho. 

Kindall is also Morales’ student advisor so when he saw an advertisement at the beginning of the school year to apply to be a custodian for an Artemis I generation Moon Tree, he presented her with an opportunity to plant space science ideas for the next generation of Briannas.

“The application had lots of questions about who would care for the tree, how will you make sure the tree is going to survive, what’s going to be your initial project with the tree, how are you going to spread the mission of the moon trees?” Kindall asked.

These are questions that helped the two of them craft a plan that would become Morales’ senior project. She submitted her application and requested special approval to start her senior project in her junior year because of the unique nature of the project. And then they waited.

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In December, they received an email saying NASA was still reviewing the applications. Then in April, they got another email saying Morales was selected and the tree was on its way to the school from a nursery in northern Idaho.

NASA selected this year’s tree custodians based on factors that will give the trees the best chances of survival including where the tree species normally grow and the environmental conditions where the tree will live. Based on that criteria and after reviewing the list of species, the pair were expecting to receive a Douglas Fir so they contacted the Caribou-Targhee National Forest for technical assistance and got connected with forestry technician Kennedy Pendell. 

“I worked at the Lucky Peak Nursery on the Boise National Forest, and we grew Douglas Fir there,” Pendell said. “So I was very familiar with the seedling process and the survival and health of Douglas Fir, and then they told me it was an American Sycamore.”

The Forest Service provides technical assistance for everything from teaching technical standards for volunteers who are updating recreation sites to be more accessible for people with disabilities to working with other Forest Service program areas to show new employees how to identify hazard trees near trails and campgrounds for anyone working on Forest Service-related projects. Not wanting to turn them away, Pendell researched the American Sycamore so she could help Morales and Kindall find the best place to plant the tree on the school campus. 

“American Sycamores really like moist soils, and they chose a spot that gets a lot of irrigation,” Pendell said. “People may have some sycamores as landscape trees here (in Idaho), but we definitely don’t have them as a primary species on our forest.” 

The seedling has the potential to grow fifty feet tall and the species can be surprisingly resilient in the face of drought-like conditions, something it will likely encounter in its new home in American Falls. 

Kindall says that in sifting through the research about moon trees, Morales found that while four moon trees from the last mission were planted in Idaho, only one survived and is growing at an elementary school near Boise. Morales said her greatest hope for this tree is that it survives.