The Artemis II crew wept Monday night as they asked Mission Control for a special favor — to name “a bright spot on the moon’’ after their commander’s late wife.
“A number of years ago, we started this journey in our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one,” Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen told Houston in a shaking voice as Cmdr. Reid Wiseman cried along with the mission’s other two crew members.
“There’s a feature in a really neat place on the moon, and it is on the near side-far side boundary,” he said.
“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,” Hansen explained.
“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call that Carroll,” he told Mission Control of the crater, with Houston agreeing to the request.
The crew then floated together in the capsule for a long embrace.
Wiseman’s wife, Carroll, died of cancer in 2020. She left behind Wiseman and their two daughters.
The crew also requested that another crater be named after their capsule, Integrity.
The name-giving came just moments after the Artemis II astronauts became the humans to travel furthest from Earth, breaking the Apollo 13 record set in 1970 at 248,655 miles from Earth.
