Why Canadian seeds are on their way to the moon with Artemis II

Thousands of kilometres from Earth, in an aluminum foil envelope, 2,600 Canadian seeds are on a voyage through outer space — along with the Artemis II crew.

“Looks a little bit like five aluminum ravioli stuck together, is what I’ve been telling people,” National Tree Seed Centre coordinator Darren Derbowka said.

The seeds include lodgepole pine, eastern white cedar, red maple, white birch and eastern white pine.

But they won’t be used to start a moon forest, or even for research. Instead, their purpose is much closer to home.

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“Right now, 25 per cent of Canada’s native trees are imperiled or threatened in some way. So this project is really to sort of build that awareness around the importance of seed,” Derbowka said.

The National Tree Seed Centre, located in Fredericton, has over 13,000 seed collections of more than 250 species of trees and shrubs.

Derbowka said that conservation work is becoming more important as a result of climate change — and he hopes Artemis II will bring light to the important work happening on Earth.

“There’s already one planet in this solar system that needs terraforming and we are standing on it,” he said.

The seeds aren’t the only Canadian representation on board. Astronaut and London, Ont., resident Jeremy Hansen is on his way to making history as the first Canadian to fly around the moon. And University of New Brunswick faculty and students are tracking the spacecraft, Orion, as part of a volunteer program with NASA.

“It’s contributing a little piece of Canada onto a really important space exploration mission, and so the opportunity to do that is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” Derbowka said.