On Monday, the Artemis II crew paid tribute to NASA commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Wiseman, with an emotional acknowledgment.
Wiseman, one of the four astronauts on the Artemis II mission, lost his wife Carroll, a 46-year-old pediatric nurse practitioner, to cancer in 2020. She is survived by Reid and their daughters, Ellie and Katherine, according to an obituary in The Virginian-Pilot.
During their communication with mission control, the crew expressed their desire to name an unnamed lunar crater in honor of Carroll.
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, with his voice occasionally trembling, explained, “There’s a feature in a really neat place on the moon, and it is on the near side, far side, boundary. In fact, it’s just on the near side of that boundary, and so at certain times of the moon’s transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth. We lost a loved one, her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. And if you want to find this one, you look at Glushko, and it’s just to the northwest of that at the same latitude as Ohm. And it’s a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it ‘Carroll.’”
The video showed Reid Wiseman wiping away tears as he placed a comforting hand on Hansen’s shoulder. The four crew members, including astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, shared a heartfelt hug.
Additionally, the crew proposed naming another crater after their Orion spacecraft, Integrity.
Wiseman shared that Carroll encouraged him to continue his astronaut career even after her illness, per the British outlet The Times. He has also spoken about his experiences as an only parent and how he prepared his daughters for the potential risks of space missions.
“I went on a walk with my kids, and I told them, ‘Here’s where the will is, here’s where the trust documents are, and if anything happens to me, here’s what’s going to happen to you,” Wiseman shared at a January NASA news conference, according to The Baltimore Banner. “That’s just a part of this life.”
In an Instagram post he shared shortly before liftoff last week, Wiseman expressed pride in his children.
“I love these two ladies, and I’m boarding that rocket a very proud father,” Wiseman wrote, accompanying a selfie with his daughters.
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