Biologists Stunned as Tree Grows in Texas from Seed That Traveled Beyond the Moon

The growth of a sweetgum tree from a seed that traveled beyond the Moon during NASA’s Artemis I mission has drawn attention from biologists and health researchers interested in how space exposure affects living organisms and what that means for future life-support systems in deep space.

The seed, which orbited the Moon and traveled approximately 270,000 miles from Earth aboard the Orion spacecraft in late 2022, was planted outside the University of Texas at Arlington’s Planetarium in April 2024. It has since grown to just over four feet tall, displaying bright green, star-shaped leaves characteristic of the sweetgum species.

This tree is part of the Artemis Moon Trees project, a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service designed to study how seeds respond to the stresses of deep space travel, including microgravity and radiation exposure. The initiative builds on a legacy dating back to the 1971 Apollo 14 mission, when astronaut Stuart Roosa carried hundreds of tree seeds into lunar orbit.

After the Apollo 14 mission, those seeds were germinated and planted around the world, becoming known as “Moon Trees.” The current Artemis program repeats this effort with five species: loblolly pine, American sycamore, sweetgum, Douglas fir, and giant sequoia, continuing research into how spaceflight affects seed viability and plant development.

Scientists at the Forest Service, including seed extractory manager Kayla Herriman in Bend, Oregon, have used X-ray imaging to examine the seeds before and after flight. This allows them to assess whether space travel altered internal seed tissues critical for germination and growth.

According to Herriman, the pre-flight X-rays confirmed the seeds were filled with healthy tissue expected to develop into trees. Post-flight imaging now helps determine if and how the space voyage changed those tissues, offering insight into biological resilience in extreme environments.

The Artemis I mission carried approximately 1,200 seeds, which spent about four weeks in space, including time thousands of miles beyond the Moon, before returning to Earth in December 2022. Seeds were distributed to educational and scientific institutions for planting, with UT Arlington receiving its sapling on April 8, 2024 — the day of a total solar eclipse visible across parts of North America.

UT Arlington’s planetarium coordinator, McKenna Dowd, noted that the project aims to understand how plants endure deep space conditions while also promoting public engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The trees serve as living experiments in astrobiology and environmental science.

Researchers emphasize that studying how seeds respond to spaceflight is relevant to long-duration human missions, where regenerative life-support systems may include growing food and producing oxygen. Understanding plant adaptation to space stressors could inform future efforts to cultivate vegetation on the Moon or Mars.

While the tree in Texas shows normal growth so far, scientists continue to monitor its development alongside other Moon Trees planted across the country. No abnormalities have been reported in its morphology or growth rate compared to Earth-grown sweetgums of similar age.

The project does not claim that space exposure enhances or harms plant health definitively; instead, it seeks to gather data on biological responses to inform future exploration. As of now, the tree stands as a visible symbol of the intersection between space science and terrestrial biology.