NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman’s wife, Carroll, didn’t get to see him fly around the moon. She was only 46 years old when she passed away from cancer.
He’s been raising their two daughters as a single dad since, describing the girls as “my whole life.”
Carroll Wiseman was very much on the minds of the Artemis II commander and his crew as they orbited the moon on Monday, April 6, and suggested naming a crater after her, prompting tears and a group embrace in space.
The poignant moment happened after the astronauts flew more than 252,000 miles away from home, breaking the record for the greatest distance humans have traveled from Earth.
“We lost a loved one, her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katey and Ellie,” astronaut Jeremy Hansen said on board their Orion spacecraft, his voice breaking.
“(The crater is) a bright spot on the moon and we would like to call it Carroll.”
In an interview on Wednesday, April 8, as the spacecraft was on its way back to Earth, Reid Wiseman said his three crew mates came up with the idea and approached him about it before the launch.
“That was an emotional moment for me, and I just thought that was just a total treasure that they had thought through this and they had offered this,” he recalled.
“I said, ‘Absolutely I would love that, I think that’s just the best.'”
But he felt he couldn’t give the speech, so Hansen stepped in.
When he spelled Carroll’s name during that now-famous moment, Wiseman said he was overcome with emotion and saw that Hansen was trembling and astronaut Christina Koch was crying, leading to that group hug with astronaut Victor Glover.
“That was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission for me. That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded,” Wiseman said.
What Happened to Reid Wiseman’s Wife?
Carroll Taylor Wiseman died in May 2020 after a five-year battle with cancer, according to her obituary, published in The Virginian-Pilot.
Her family has not publicly revealed the type of cancer she was diagnosed with.
Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she became a pediatric nurse practitioner and a school nurse.
Reid and Carroll WisemanCourtesy NASA
Carroll Taylor Wiseman later “dedicated her life to helping others” as a newborn intensive care unit registered nurse, according to her husband’s NASA profile.
Even as her health deteriorated, she urged him to stay put in Houston and keep training as an astronaut.
“When she really started getting sick, I wanted to move us back towards where her family was from,” Wiseman told CBS News.
“And she’s like, ‘No, this is where you work. This is the job you love. This is where you work, and this is where our kids are growing up, and we are going to stay right here.’ To me, that was marching orders … to continue down this path.”
Reid Wiseman’s Daughters
The astronaut “considers his time as an only parent as his greatest challenge and the most rewarding phase of his life,” his NASA bio reads.
“My girls are my whole life,” the Baltimore native told Johns Hopkins Magazine.
The couple’s daughters are now 20 and 17, according to The Baltimore Banner.
As a widower, Wiseman has been upfront with his daughters about the risks of his job.
“I went on a walk with my kids, and I told them, ‘Here’s where the will is, here’s where the trust documents are, and if anything happens to me, here’s what’s going to happen to you,’” Reid Wiseman said in January at a NASA news conference, the outlet reported.
“That’s just a part of this life.”
But he was more upbeat just before the historic moon mission began this month.
“I love these two ladies, and I’m boarding that rocket a very proud father,” Wiseman wrote as he posted a selfie of the family before the launch.
The proposal to name a moon crater after Carroll Wiseman will be formally submitted to the International Astronomical Union, the organization that governs the naming of celestial bodies, after the Artemis II mission ends, NASA says.
The Orion spacecraft is scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego on Friday, April 10.