Artemis II Crew Name Lunar Crater After Commander's Late Wife

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“To the moon and back” is a popular way of saying “I love you,” but for the crew of NASA’s Artemis II, it was quite literally true. The four astronauts recently orbited the moon, and along the way, they honored one of their own by naming a newly discovered crater after Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll.

The crew—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—successfully completed their 10-day journey on Saturday April 11, becoming the first humans to travel to the moon and back since the Apollo era. During their mission, they sent several messages back to Earth from inside their Orion spacecraft.

After discovering “relatively fresh craters on the moon” the crew recorded a message proposing new names for two of them. The first, Integrity, is their tribute to the spacecraft that carried them. Hansen says in the clip, “If you were to look at Orientale on the far side and then draw a line straight up to Ohm on the far side, relatively in the middle is an unnamed crater and we would like to suggest it be called Integrity in the future.”

The second crater is especially meaningful and is in a “really neat” spot near the side of a boundary that makes it visible from Earth at certain times. Hansen explains that when their “close-knit astronaut family” first started planning their journey a number of years ago, they lost a loved one. He says, “ Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reed, the mother of Katie and Ellie.” Hanson explains that they would like to name the second crater after her and described it as a “bright spot” on the moon on the same latitude of Ohm.

You can see Wiseman tearing up as Hansen speaks, and the two pull each other close in an embrace, before Koch and Glover move in for a group hug. The heartwarming video is just one example of how close the four astronauts became during their mission.

Wiseman’s biography on NASA’s website says, “Carroll dedicated her life to helping others as a newborn intensive care unit Registered Nurse. She is survived by their two children. Despite a long list of professional accolades, Reid considers his time as an only parent as his greatest challenge and the most rewarding phase of his life.”

Watch the video below and find out more about the Carroll crater here.