Moments after the crew of Artemis 2 broke the spaceflight record for the farthest humans have ever been from Earth, the crew shared an emotional moment, proposing to name a crater on the Moon after mission commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died of cancer in 2020.
Speaking to Houston, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen’s 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. And there is a feature in a really neat place on the Moon, and it is on the nearside/farside boundary. In fact, it’s just on the nearside of that boundary, and so at certain times of the Moon’s transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth.
“And so we lost a loved one. Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. And if you want to find this one, you look at Glushko, and it’s just to the northwest of that, at the same latitude as Ohm, and it’s a bright spot on the Moon. And we would like to call it Carroll.”
This was followed by 45 seconds of silence from Mission Control. On the NASA broadcast, the crew could be seen hugging Wiseman.
Then CapCom Jenny Gibbons replied: “Integrity and Carroll Crater. Loud and clear. Thank you.”
Unofficial name — for now
The crew also proposed to name a different crater in honor of “our great spacecraft, Integrity,” which Hansen went on to describe as “relatively in the middle” of a line drawn from Orientale “straight up to Ohm.”
Like all lunar features, the names will be subject to approval by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) — which can take some time. Perhaps most famously, in 1968 on Apollo 8, astronaut Jim Lovell proposed that a mountain distinctly shaped like a pyramid be named after his wife, Marilyn. But the name “Mount Marilyn” wasn’t formally accepted by the IAU until 2017. It remains to be seen whether Integrity and Carroll will see a quicker path to approval.
While NASA hasn’t yet confirmed exactly which crater is the one singled out by the crew as Carroll, we can posit a candidate based on the description radioed down by Hansen: northwest of Glushko Crater, at the same latitude as Ohm Crater, and at “a bright spot on the Moon.” Lunar imagery — like the mosaic below from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera — shows a crater that matches that description at a conspicuously bright spot, at roughly 18.8° N, 86.5° W. (UPDATE: NASA has confirmed this crater as the one proposed by the crew.)
This crater does not have a name in the 2013 edition of the 1:1 million scale lunar maps at the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, which is operated by the United States Geological Service under the auspices of the IAU, and represents what its website describes as “a comprehensive depiction of lunar nomenclature approved by the IAU.”
