Artemis crew propose to name moon crater after astronaut’s late wife in emotional moment
The crew of the historic Artemis II mission memorialized the late wife of one of their astronauts by proposing to name a crater on the moon after her on Monday, an emotional moment that was captured on video.
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Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian astronaut on the mission, called down to mission control and said the crew wanted to “honor their mission by naming two craters on the moon.”
One of the craters was dedicated to Carroll Wiseman, the wife of mission commander Reid Wiseman, who died of cancer in 2020 at 46. She “dedicated her life to helping others as a newborn intensive care unit registered nurse,” NASA wrote.
In a video of the emotional moments after Hansen read the emotional tribute to Carroll Weisman, the group wrapped arms around each other as they floated in zero gravity. Wiseman and Christina Koch, a NASA astronaut on Artemis II, can be seen wiping tears from their eyes.
“We lost a loved one, her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katey and Ellie… a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call it Carroll,” Hansen said.
Wiseman was close to moving to be near his wife’s family after she was diagnosed with cancer, leaving behind his career as an astronaut, The Sunday Times reported. But she insisted he stay home in Houston to pursue his dream.
A few years later, in 2023, Wiseman was named commander of the Artemis II mission.
But his kids are what keep him moving forward. “Despite a long list of professional accolades, Reid considers his time as an only parent his greatest challenge and the most rewarding phase of his life,” Wiseman’s NASA biography reads.
Several months before liftoff, Wiseman told NBC’s “TODAY” show that the mission was weighing on him. Deciding to leave his children and go on the life-changing mission was a difficult choice.
“I’m a single father of two daughters,” he said. “It’d be a lot easier just to sit on my couch and watch football for the weekend, but at the same time, there’s four humans that were put in a position to be able to go explore and do something that is very unique and rare in this civilization.”
According to NASA, the crew named another crater after the Orion capsule they are currently flying in, calling it “Integrity,” honoring both their spacecraft and the historic mission.
When the mission is complete, the crater name proposals will be formally submitted to the International Astronomical Union, which dictates the naming of “celestial bodies” and their “surface features”.
On Monday, NASA said the four astronauts officially completed the mission’s lunar observation period, breaking the record for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth, reaching a distance of approximately 252,752 miles.
“As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration,” Hansen radioed to Mission Control when the milestone was confirmed.
“We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear,” he said. “But most importantly, we choose this moment to challenge this generation — and the next — to make sure this record is not long-lived.”
The Artemis II crew flew farther from Earth than the Apollo 13 crew in 1970, which reached roughly 248,600 miles away, according to NASA.
Wiseman, Koch, Glover and Hansen began their journey home after the lunar flyby. The astronauts officially exited the moon’s cosmic neighborhood Tuesday at 1:25 p.m., when their capsule was roughly 41,000 miles away from the moon, NASA said.
After 10 days in space, the crew is set to return to Earth on Friday, splashing down off the coast of San Diego.
