Celestial Summer in Madison Square Park

NASA has been planting cosmic memories across the decades. In 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa carried seeds from five tree species aboard Apollo 14; after returning to Earth, those seedlings—known as Moon Trees—were distributed to institutions worldwide. According to Adafruit Blog, NASA's Artemis Program revived the concept: seeds orbited the moon for four weeks in twenty twenty-two aboard the Orion spacecraft and were later germinated by Forest Service scientists. Madison Square Park Conservancy received one of the seedlings—an American Sweetgum—and celebrated the planting on July sixteenth.

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