Reid Wiseman felt a little jealous about the tree that he and his crewmates helped dedicate on U.S. Capitol grounds on Tuesday (June 4).
The NASA astronaut, who is assigned to command Artemis 2 , the next mission to fly humans to the moon after a more than 50 year hiatus, was, in a way, beaten to the punch by the sapling . Wiseman will not launch until late 2025, at the earliest. "That little sweetgum has been to the moon and it has come back and it is now sitting here," said Wiseman, who was joined at the tree planting ceremony by his three fellow moon-bound astronauts, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch of NASA and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.
"I think about this tree growing maybe about 'that tall' as we are finished with Artemis 2 and we're back." Related: NASA's Artemis 2 mission: Everything you need to know The sweetgum's journey began before it sprouted. As one of more than 1,000 seeds of five different species of tree flown on NASA's 2022 uncrewed Artemis I mission, the sweetgum reached distances farther than any human has flown as it completed a 26-day mission around the moon and back to Earth.
Inspired by a similar symbolic set of seeds flown on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, these new seeds and the saplings they have since become have been dubbed by NASA the "Artemis Moon Trees." Now, the space agency is beginning to deliver the trees to be planted where they can serve as a long-lasting point of inspiration and remi.
