This event has ended. You can watch the recorded program below.
In 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa carried hundreds of tree seeds to the moon and back as part of an experiment with the National Forest Service. Back on Earth, the Forest Service germinated some of the seeds and gave trees to several states in 1975 and 1976 as part of the nation’s bicentennial celebration. Today, these “moon trees” can be found throughout the country.
In this talk, Dr. David Williams from NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center will explore the history of Colonel Roosa’s moon trees and the legacy of this little-known Apollo experiment.
This program will be presented online. After you register, you will receive an email that includes the link to watch the live stream on the date and time noted above.
Dave is a planetary scientist at Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and the acting head of the
NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, one of NASA's
deep archives for spacecraft data. Much of the older data
in the archive is incomplete, on obsolete media, and/or
has insufficient documentation to allow for optimal
scientific use. One of Dave's projects is to restore these
data and collect enough information to create metadata
that will make the data permanently accessible to
researchers. He also works on documenting older missions
and instruments for historical and scientific purposes,
and archiving the data steadily coming in from currently
operating missions. Dave received his B.S. in Geophysics
from Binghamton University and his Ph.D. in Geophysics and
Space Physics from UCLA.
