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      In the two years since NASA’s Orion spacecraft returned to Earth with more than 2,000 tree seedlings sourced in a partnership with USDA Forest Service, Artemis I Moon trees have taken root at 236 locations across the contiguous United States. Organizations are cultivating more than just trees, as they nurture community connections, spark curiosity about space, and foster a deeper understanding of NASA’s missions.
      Universities, federal agencies, museums, and other organizations who were selected to be Moon tree recipients have branched out to provide their community unique engagements with their seedling.
      Children sitting in a circle around a newly planted Moon tree and learning about NASA’s Artemis I mission. Adria Gillespie “Through class visits to the tree, students have gained a lot of interest in caring for the tree, and their curiosity for the unknown in outer space sparked them to do research of their own to get answers to their inquiries,” said Adria Gillespie, the district science coach at Greenfield Union School District in Greenfield, California.
      The presence of a Moon tree at schools has blossomed into more student engagements surrounding NASA’s missions. Along with planting their American Sycamore, students from Eagle Pointe Elementary in Plainfield, Illinois, are participating in a Lunar Quest club to learn about NASA and engage in a simulated field trip to the Moon.
      Eagle Pointe Elementary students also took part in a planting ceremony for their seedling, where they buried a time capsule with the seed, and established a student committee responsible for caring for their Moon tree.
      At Marshall STEMM Academy in Toledo, Ohio, second grade students were assigned reading activities associated with their Moon tree, fourth graders created Moon tree presentations to show the school, and students engaged with city leaders and school board members to provide a Moon tree dedication.
      Two individuals planting a Moon tree. Brandon Dillman A seedling sent to The Gathering Garden in Mount Gilead, North Carolina, is cared for by community volunteers. Lessons with local schools and 4-H clubs, as well as the establishment of newsletters and social media to maintain updates, have sprouted from The Gathering Garden’s Loblolly Pine.
      Sprucing Up the Moon Trees’ Environment
      In addition to nurturing their Moon tree, many communities have planted other trees alongside their seedling to foster a healthier environment. In Castro Valley, California, a non-profit called ForestR planted oak, fir, and sequoia trees to nestle their seedling among a tree “family.”
      New homes for additional Moon tree seedlings are being identified each season through Fall 2025. Communities continue to track how the impact of NASA’s science and innovation grows alongside their Moon trees.
      NASA’s “new generation” Moon trees originally blossomed from NASA’s Apollo 14 mission, where NASA astronaut Stuart Roosa carried tree seeds into lunar orbit. NASA’s Next Generation STEM project partnered with USDA Forest Service to bring Moon trees to selected organizations. As NASA continues to work for the benefit of all, its Moon trees have demonstrated how one tiny seed can sprout positive change for communities, the environment, and education.
      Learn more about NASA’s STEM engagements: https://stem.nasa.gov
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      On Dec. 10, 1974, NASA launched Helios 1, the first of two spacecraft to make close observations of the Sun. In one of the largest international efforts at the time, the Federal Republic of Germany, also known as West Germany, provided the spacecraft, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, had overall responsibility for U.S. participation, and NASA’s Lewis, now Glenn, Research Center in Cleveland provided the launch vehicle. Equipped with 10 instruments, Helios 1 made its first close approach to the Sun on March 15, 1975, passing closer and traveling faster than any previous spacecraft. Helios 2, launched in 1976, passed even closer. Both spacecraft  far exceeded their 18-month expected lifetime, returning unprecedented data from their unique vantage points. 

      The fully assembled Helios 1 spacecraft prepared for launch.Credit: NASA The West German company Messerchmitt-Bölkow-Blohm built the two Helios probes, the first non-Soviet and non-American spacecraft placed in heliocentric orbit, for the West German space agency DFVLR, today’s DLR. Each 815-pound Helios probe carried 10 U.S. and West German instruments, weighing a total of 158 pounds, to study the Sun and its environment. The instruments included high-energy particle detectors to measure the solar wind, magnetometers to study the Sun’s magnetic field and variations in electric and magnetic waves, and micrometeoroid detectors. Once activated and checked out, operators in the German control center near Munich controlled the spacecraft and collected the raw data. To evenly distribute the solar radiation the spacecraft spun on its axis once every second, and optical mirrors on its surface reflected the majority of the heat. 

      Workers encapsulate a Helios solar probe into its payload fairing. Credit: NASA
      Launch of Helios 1 took place at 2:11 a.m. EST Dec. 10, 1974, from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force, now Space Force, Station, on a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket. This marked the first successful flight of this rocket, at the time the most powerful in the world, following the failure of the Centaur upper stage during the rocket’s inaugural launch on Feb. 11, 1974. The successful launch of Helios 1 provided confidence in the Titan IIIE-Centaur, needed to launch the Viking orbiters and landers to Mars in 1976 and the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn, later renamed Voyager, spacecraft in 1977 to begin their journeys through the outer solar system. The Centaur upper stage placed Helios 1 into a solar orbit with a period of 190 days, with its perihelion, or closest point to the Sun, well inside the orbit of Mercury. Engineers activated the spacecraft’s 10 instruments within a few days of launch, with the vehicle declared fully operational on Jan. 16, 1975. On March 15, Helios 1 reached its closest distance to the Sun of 28.9 million miles, closer than any other previous spacecraft – Mariner 10 held the previous record during its three Mercury encounters. Helios 1 also set a spacecraft speed record, traveling at 148,000 miles per hour at perihelion. Parts of the spacecraft reached a temperature of 261 degrees Fahrenheit, but the instruments continued to operate without problems. During its second perihelion on Sept. 21, temperatures reached 270 degrees, affecting the operation of some instruments. Helios 1 continued to operate and return useful data until both its primary and backup receivers failed and its high-gain antenna no longer pointed at Earth. Ground controllers deactivated the spacecraft on Feb. 18, 1985, with the last contact made on Feb. 10, 1986. 

      Helios 1 sits atop its Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket at Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force, now Space Force, Station in Florida.Credit: NASA
      Helios 2 launched on Jan. 15, 1976, and followed a path similar to its predecessor’s but one that took it even closer to the Sun. On April 17, it approached to within 27 million miles of Sun, traveling at a new record of 150,000 miles per hour. At that distance, the spacecraft experienced 10% more solar heat than its predecessor. Helios 2’s downlink transmitter failed on March 3, 1980, resulting in no further useable data from the spacecraft. Controllers shut it down on Jan. 7, 1981. Scientists correlated data from the Helios instruments with similar data gathered by other spacecraft, such as the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform Explorers 47 and 50 in Earth orbit, the Pioneer solar orbiters, and Pioneer 10 and 11 in the outer solar system. In addition to their solar observations, Helios 1 and 2 studied the dust and ion tails of the comets C/1975V1 West, C/1978H1 Meier, and C/1979Y1 Bradfield. The information from the Helios probes greatly increased our knowledge of the Sun and its environment, and also raised more questions left for later spacecraft from unique vantage points to try to answer. 
      llustration of a Helios probe in flight, with all its booms deployed. Credit: NASA The joint ESA/NASA Ulysses mission studied the Sun from vantage points above its poles. After launch from space shuttle Discovery during STS-41 on Oct. 6, 1990, Ulysses used Jupiter’s gravity to swing it out of the ecliptic plane and fly first over the Sun’s south polar region from June to November 1994, then over the north polar region from June and September 1995. Ulysses continued its unique studies during several more polar passes until June 30, 2009, nearly 19 years after launch and more than four times its expected lifetime. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched on Aug. 12, 2018, has made ever increasingly close passes to the Sun, including flying through its corona, breaking the distance record set by Helios 2. The Parker Solar Probe reached its first perihelion of 15 million miles on Nov. 5, 2018, with its closest approach of just 3.86 million miles of the Sun’s surface, just 4.5 percent of the Sun-Earth distance, planned for Dec. 24, 2024. The ESA Solar Orbiter launched on Feb. 10, 2020, and began science operations in November 2021. Its 10 instruments include cameras that have returned the highest resolution images of the Sun including its polar regions from as close as 26 million miles away. 
      Illustration of the Ulysses spacecraft over the Sun’s pole.Credit: NASA Illustration of the Parker Solar Probe during a close approach to the Sun.Credit: NASA The ESA Solar Orbiter observing the Sun.Credit: NASA About the Author
      John J. Uri

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      NASA’s SPHEREx observatory undergoes integration and testing at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in April 2024. The space telescope will use a technique called spectroscopy across the entire sky, capturing the universe in more than 100 colors. BAE Systems Registration is open for digital content creators to attend the launch of NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission, and NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission. SPHEREx will provide the first all-sky spectral survey, collecting data on more than 450 million galaxies along with more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way in order to explore the origins of the universe. PUNCH is a constellation of four small satellites in low-Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind. 
      NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than February 2025 for the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 
      If your passion is to communicate and engage the world online, then this is the event for you! Seize the opportunity to see and share the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions’ launch. 
      A maximum of 50 social media users will be selected to attend this one-day event and will be given access similar to news media. 
      NASA Social participants will have the opportunity to: 
      View the launch of the SPHEREx and PUNCH satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.   Tour NASA facilities at Vandenberg Space Force Base.  Meet and interact with SPHEREx and PUNCH subject matter experts.  Meet fellow space enthusiasts who are active on social media.  NASA Social registration for the SPHEREx and PUNCH launch opens on Monday, Dec. 9, and the deadline to apply is Monday, Dec. 23 at noon ET. All social applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis. 
      APPLY NOW 
      Do I need to have a social media account to register? 
      Yes. This event is designed for people who: 
      Actively use multiple social networking platforms and tools to disseminate information to a unique audience.  Regularly produce new content that features multimedia elements.  Have the potential to reach a large number of people using digital platforms, or reach a unique audience, separate and distinctive from traditional news media and/or NASA audiences.  Must have an established history of posting content on social media platforms.  Have previous postings that are highly visible, respected, and widely recognized.  Users on all social networks are encouraged to use the hashtag #NASASocial. Updates and information about the event will be shared via @NASASocial and @NASA_LSP on X and via posts to LSP’s Facebook. 
      How do I register? 
      Registration for this event opens Monday, Dec. 9, and closes Monday, Dec. 23 at noon ET. Registration is for one person only (you) and is nontransferable. Each individual wishing to attend must register separately. Each application will be considered on a case-by-case basis. 
      Can I register if I am not a U.S. citizen? 
      Because of the security restrictions on the Space Force base, registration is limited to U.S. citizens. If you have a valid permanent resident card, you will be processed as a U.S. citizen. 
      When will I know if I am selected? 
      After registrations have been received and processed, an email with confirmation information and additional instructions will be sent to those selected. We expect to send the acceptance notifications by Jan. 31. 
      What are NASA Social credentials? 
      All social applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Those chosen must prove through the registration process that they meet specific engagement criteria. 
      If you do not make the registration list for this NASA Social, you still can attend the launch offsite and participate in the conversation online.  
      What are the registration requirements? 
      Registration indicates your intent to travel to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and attend the one-day event in person. You are responsible for your own expenses for travel, accommodations, food, and other amenities. 
      Some events and participants scheduled to appear at the event are subject to change without notice. NASA is not responsible for loss or damage incurred as a result of attending. NASA, moreover, is not responsible for loss or damage incurred if the event is cancelled with limited or no notice. Please plan accordingly. 
      Vandenberg is a government facility. Those who are selected will need to complete an additional registration step to receive clearance to enter the secure areas. 
      IMPORTANT: To be admitted, you will need to provide two forms of unexpired government-issued identification; one must be a photo ID and match the name provided on the registration. Those without proper identification cannot be admitted. 
      For a complete list of acceptable forms of ID, please visit: NASA Credentialing Identification Requirements. 
      All registrants must be at least 18 years old. 
      What if the launch date changes? 
      Many different factors can cause a scheduled launch date to change multiple times. If the launch date changes, NASA may adjust the date of the NASA Social accordingly to coincide with the new target launch date. NASA will notify registrants of any changes by email. 
      If the launch is postponed, attendees will be invited to attend a later launch date. NASA cannot accommodate attendees for delays beyond 72 hours. 
      NASA Social attendees are responsible for any additional costs they incur related to any launch delay. We strongly encourage participants to make travel arrangements that are refundable and/or flexible. 
      What if I cannot come to Vandenberg Space Force Base? 
      If you cannot come to Vandenberg Space Force Base and attend in person, you should not register for the NASA Social. You can follow the conversation online using #NASASocial.  
      You can watch the launch on NASA+ or plus.nasa.gov/. NASA will provide regular launch and mission updates on @NASA and @NASA_LSP on X. 
      If you cannot make this NASA Social, don’t worry; NASA is planning many other Socials in the near future at various locations! Check back here for updates. 
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