Love. To the Moon and Back
Artemis II Commander, Reid Wiseman and his wife Carroll Wiseman. Source: New York Times.
On Monday, at the farthest point from Earth any human being has ever traveled, four astronauts stopped to remember someone who did not make it to see them there. Moments after the Artemis II crew broke the record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen got on the radio with mission control. His voice grew thick with emotion as he spoke: “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, the spouse of Reid, and mother of Katie and Ellie.” Carroll Taylor Wiseman was a registered nurse who worked in the intensive care unit for newborns and later as a school nurse near Houston, Texas. She passed away after a five-year-long battle with cancer in 2020 at age 46. Her husband, Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman, has been raising their two daughters, Katie and Ellie, alone ever since. When Carroll first got sick, Wiseman wanted to move the family back north near the rest of their family. She refused. “No, this is where you work and you love your job,” she told him. “And we should not give that up for this.” Three years after her death, her husband was named commander of the first crewed mission to the Moon in over half a century. The crew proposed naming an unnamed crater after “Carroll”. It is located at a bright spot on the Moon's nearside-farside boundary, visible from Earth. As Hansen spoke, Wiseman reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. The crew pulled together in a silent, floating embrace. Mission control responded simply: "Integrity and Carroll Crater, loud and clear." The names will need approval from the International Astronomical Union, a process that can take years. When Astronaut Jim Lovell named a mountain after his wife Marilyn during Apollo 8 in 1968, it wasn't formally recognized until 2017. Carroll may wait too. But somewhere on the Moon, at a bright spot on the edge between the near side and the far side, there is already a place that bears her name in the hearts of the people who put it there. In a week when the news has been dominated by profanity-laced threats, intelligence wars, and military escalations, four people traveling farther from home than any humans in history took a moment to grieve, to remember, and to love. It was, quietly, the most human thing to happen all week.