Molly Manning, Managing Editor
Before the Artemis II crew splashed down off the California coast Friday, they took the time to honor the life and legacy of NASA Commander Reid Wiseman’s wife, Carroll — a nurse, mother and VCU alum who died of cancer in 2020.
The group aboard Artemis II was the first to visit the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, with Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, orbited the moon last week in order to “verify modern human capabilities in deep space and pave the way for long-term exploration and science on the lunar surface,” according to the Kennedy Space Center.
The group was the first to see the far side of the moon since 1972, and broke the record for the farthest distance from Earth traveled by humans, according to NPR. They spotted several craters that remained unnamed.
The first proposed crater name was Integrity, the name of the spacecraft — the second was Caroll, for Commander Wiseman’s late wife.
A new, bright spot on the moon’s boundary between near and far sides will forever be known as “Carroll” after Hansen requested the naming ahead of the Artemis II’s Monday fly-around, according to the Associated Press.
“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, the mother of Katie and Ellie,” Hansen said in a NASA video from inside the spacecraft.
The crew will officially submit a request of the two proposed names to the International Astronomical Union later this week; a representative promised a decision in about a month.
Carroll was 46 when she passed after battling cancer for five years. After graduating from James Madison University and VCU, the Virginia Beach native worked as a pediatric nurse practitioner and a school nurse in Maryland and Texas.
Carroll’s crater is visible from Earth during certain lunar transits.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly names Artemis II as Apollo 8. This article has been updated to reflect that correction.