While breaking the record for distance traveled by humans from Earth, the Artemis II crew members remain focused on more personal matters in the names they’ve recommended for craters.
They suggested one crater be named after their Orion spacecraft, Integrity. The other? Carroll, after the late wife of mission commander Reid Wiseman, who is originally from Cockeysville.
“A number of years ago, we started this journey in our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one. … Her name was Carroll,” Mission Specialist Heremy Hansen said. “It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call it Carroll.”
Crew members teared up at Hansen’s suggestion. They floated toward one another and embraced in the spacecraft.
Carroll Wiseman was diagnosed with cancer soon after Reid Wiseman’s first spaceflight. She battled the disease for five years before dying in May 2020 at age 46, a month before Reid Wiseman’s mother, Judy, died from Alzheimer’s disease.
A native of Virginia Beach, Carroll Wiseman worked at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Virginia, and as a school nurse in Patuxent River and later in Friendswood, Texas, according to her obituary in The Virginian-Pilot.
Carroll Wiseman “dedicated her life to helping others as a newborn intensive care unit Registered Nurse,” NASA said in a bio of her husband.
The two losses put death into perspective for Wiseman, who became a single father of two daughters, Ellie and Katherine, ahead of his return to flight in November 2022 and his current voyage around the moon.
“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,’” Reid Wiseman, now 50, said at a NASA news conference in January.
Artemis II Names New Moon Craters: Integrity and Carroll (NASA)
His daughters, now 17 and 20, and his 83-year-old father watched him make history when the Artemis II crew launched into space on April 1. Now, their loved one could soon have a crater named in her honor.
The International Astronomical Union is responsible for naming planetary features. Representatives from the organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Lunar features are generally named after explorers, scientists, or [those] who have been deceased for three years but several features have also been officially named for the provisional names that astronauts designate during lunar exploration,” a NASA spokesperson said in an email. “One example is Mount Marilyn, named for Jim Lovell’s wife.”
Lovell, an astronaut on the Apollo 8 and 13 missions, recorded a wake-up message for the current space crew before his death in August at age 97. “Welcome to my old neighborhood,” he said in a message played Monday.
Those in the command center on Earth offered a brief moment of silence and responded: “Integrity and Carroll Crater. Loud and clear. Thank you.”
Banner reporter Sapna Bansil contributed to this reporting.
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