{"id":581487,"date":"2026-04-04T10:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T10:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/581487\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T10:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T10:10:15","slug":"why-canadian-seeds-are-on-their-way-to-the-moon-with-artemis-ii-new-brunswick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/581487\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Canadian seeds are on their way to the moon with Artemis II – New Brunswick"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Thousands of kilometres from Earth, in an aluminum foil envelope, 2,600 Canadian seeds are on a voyage through outer space \u2014 along with the Artemis II<\/a> crew.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLooks a little bit like five aluminum ravioli stuck together, is what I\u2019ve been telling people,\u201d National Tree Seed Centre coordinator Darren Derbowka said.<\/p>\n

The seeds include lodgepole pine, eastern white cedar, red maple, white birch and eastern white pine.<\/p>\n

But they won\u2019t be used to start a moon forest, or even for research. Instead, their purpose is much closer to home.<\/p>\n

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\u201cRight now, 25 per cent of Canada\u2019s 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,\u201d Derbowka said.<\/p>\n

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

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Derbowka said that conservation work is becoming more important as a result of climate change \u2014 and he hopes Artemis II will bring light to the important work happening on Earth.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s already one planet in this solar system that needs terraforming and we are standing on it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The seeds aren\u2019t the only Canadian representation on board. Astronaut and London, Ont., resident Jeremy Hansen<\/a> 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<\/a>, Orion, as part of a volunteer program with NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d Derbowka said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Descrease article font size Increase article font size Thousands of kilometres from Earth, in an aluminum foil envelope,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[58777,49,48,15736,4779,44,306],"class_list":{"0":"post-581487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-artemis-ii","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-conservation","12":"tag-nature","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}