The Artemis II mission crew experienced a profoundly emotional moment during their historic lunar flyby, dedicating a crater on the moon to mission commander Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll Wiseman.
As the spacecraft Integrity reached a record-breaking 252,756 miles from Earth on April 6, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen announced to mission control, "We lost a loved one... Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. It's a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call it Carroll."
Wiseman's daughters, Ellie (20) and Katie (17), watched the tribute unfold from NASA's Johnson Space Center visitor gallery in Houston. The crater, located northwest of Glushko crater at the same latitude as Ohm crater, straddles the near and far sides of the moon.
"I was carrying a legacy of her along," Wiseman later reflected. "They were so proud that this family was just continuing to go down this path that we had forged for 17 years together."
Carroll Wiseman, a pediatric nurse, passed away from cancer in 2020 at age 46. When her husband considered leaving his astronaut career to care for her, she insisted they remain in Texas, telling him, "You are not leaving this job that you've worked your whole life to get."
Wiseman revealed that his daughters' support became his greatest motivation. "They turned it around in their head to an extremely positive thing," he said, noting that Ellie baked moon-shaped cupcakes in his honor. "Here these two kids I thought were gonna pull me, but they were pushing me."
The family had difficult conversations about mission risks, but Wiseman found the discussions ultimately liberating. "I don't think it scared them. I think it liberated them, that we just looked at it head on... And it's incredible. It was hard for me to have that conversation, but then it was also very freeing."
Two days before the April 1 launch from Kennedy Space Center, Wiseman posted a photo with his daughters, captioning it, "'Dad, we can't leave the rocket without a .5 together!!' I love these two ladies, and I'm boarding that rocket a very proud father."
During the mission's lunar flyby, Wiseman struggled to describe the view. "No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing. There's no adjectives. I'm going to need to invent new ones."
After Carroll's passing, Wiseman's family began sending him pictures of the moon to remind him of his purpose. "I honor her every single day, every single minute," he said, reflecting on how her memory propelled him through NASA's first crewed moon mission since 1973.