When his wife was diagnosed with cancer, Reid Wiseman was ready to leave behind his dream career as an astronaut and move across the country to be near her family.
But Carroll Wiseman insisted that they and their two daughters should stay put in Houston, Texas, refusing to let him put his life on hold even as hers was fading.
Five years after her death aged 46, Wiseman is fulfilling his wife’s wish for him to keep reaching higher — by leading humanity’s return to the moon as commander of the Nasa-led Artemis II mission.
Wiseman said: “When Carroll started getting sick, I wanted to get her home to Virginia, to her family, and she said: ‘No, we are not leaving. Our kids are not leaving the school and their friends, and you are not leaving this job that you’ve worked your whole life to get.’
“When she passed away … it was interesting to watch my family members start to, like, send me a picture of the moon, or say: ‘Hey, we’re proud of what you’re doing’ … It was like I was carrying a legacy of her along and they were so proud that this family was just continuing to go down this path that we had forged for 17 years together.
“I honour her every single day, every single minute.”
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The Artemis campaign is aimed at building a long-term human presence on the moon, to serve as a stepping-stone for the onward exploration of Mars. Artemis II will take crew to the moon next year for the first time since Nasa’s first lunar exploration programme, Apollo, ended 53 years ago.
Wiseman, 49, along with his Nasa crewmates, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian space agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will spend ten days aboard the Orion spacecraft, which will launch on Nasa’s SLS rocket.
Nasa’s Orion spacecraft
NASA/ESA/ATG MEDIALAB
They will test its handling qualities, life support systems, communication and navigation capabilities, do a flyby of the moon on the sixth day and fulfil a packed science schedule.
Nasa announced this week that the mission could launch as soon as February next year, two months earlier than previously targeted. The follow-on mission, Artemis III, aims to put crew on the lunar surface in 2027, but the lander being developed by SpaceX is far from ready and China is breathing down Nasa’s neck.
Jim Bridenstine, the former head of Nasa, warned a congressional committee this month that it was “highly unlikely” that the US and its international partners could beat China “unless something changes”.
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But Sean Duffy, the acting head of Nasa, told a meeting with staff days later: “I’ll be damned if that’s the story we write.”
Speaking at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston this week, Duffy added: “Some are challenging our leadership in space, say like the Chinese … We love competition and we are going to win the second space race back to the moon.”
The Artemis II crew prefer to stress the international collaboration that has gone into their mission.
“We’re just going to pursue excellence … that’s how you win a space race and that’s just how you move our countries forward. More importantly, that’s how you create an environment where you might encourage others to collaborate,” Glover, 49, the mission pilot, said.
The Space Launch System rocket carrying an Orion spacecraft on the maiden flight of Nasa’s Artemis programme in 2022
JOE MARINO/UPI /ALAMY
Selected for the mission in 2022, they have spent the last two and a half years training to the point that they are like family, with an implicit trust in one another and intuitive teamwork. As they loop around the far side of the moon, the crew of Artemis II will lose communication with mission control. For 45 minutes, they will be entirely disconnected from their home planet: no radio link, no sight line to Earth.
“I would love it if the entire world, those eight billion people, could come together and, you know, just be hoping and praying for us to get that acquisition of signal and be back in touch with everybody,” Glover said.
“If we had the ability to be one thing for one moment, that would remind us when things get tough. It won’t fix everything, but it would be a reminder, a data point that we all share, that we can do challenging and very big and very important things when we work together.”
They have rehearsed over and over in a cockpit simulator, where instructors put them through a relentless series of what the commander calls “evil” scenarios.
“We’ll be sitting in the sim, all our mission controllers are in mission control and then stuff will just start breaking. You’re like: ‘Oh come on, really. That?’ — and then we’ll just have to see what we can create to come home, kind of Apollo 13 style,” Wiseman said.
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He and Glover were Navy test pilots before selection to Nasa’s astronaut corps; Wiseman in 2009 and Glover in 2013. Glover’s call sign — assigned to him by one of his early military commanders — is Ike, standing for “I know everything”.
Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen in 2023
NASA/FRANK MICHAUX
Koch, 46, an engineer and explorer, spent a year at the South Pole as a research associate and holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a female astronaut: 328 days. Hansen, 49, also a former military test pilot, is the only member to have never flown in space.
“In the sim, when we entered that loss of signal there is something so serene about that moment. It’s almost … heavenly. You’re alone, four of you, totally blocked from planet Earth by the moon and the only thing on the other side is deep space,” Wiseman said.
“I cannot wait to experience that loss of signal and then acquisition of signal and seeing Earth rise. It’s just gonna be ridiculous … and wow, yeah, if we could get the whole world together for just a minute.”
Orion will take the crew beyond and around the moon, nearly 250,000 miles (402,335km) from Earth — potentially reaching the furthest humans have travelled into deep space. Their top speed will be more than 25,000mph.
Wiseman’s daughters, Ellie and Katherine, were young teenagers when their mother died. They have some reservations about their father’s lunar journey.
He said: “It’s a really risky mission and that weighs on me pretty hard, for me to say goodbye to those two girls when we go aboard this rocket. They’d rather I not go, right? But … I’m not gonna give up something that means a lot to me because it will mean more to them that I continue to pursue these dreams.”
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Wiseman turns to books to help him push through personal and professional challenges but there is one theme in particular that he has prioritised, based on advice from Alan Bean, the lunar module pilot on Apollo 12 in 1969 and the fourth person to walk on the moon.
Wiseman recalls: “He said: ‘You know, when I was training to fly on Apollo 12, I read a thousand books on how to fly a lunar lander and I read zero books on how to be a dad.’”
“That hit me hard … I immediately changed my focus on what I was learning about. So, I do try to read some fiction, just to have some fun every now and then, but I would say 90 per cent of what I read right now is how to raise daughters.”
He sees “hints of deep pride” from them. “Teenagers in general are hard … but I can see it coming out every now and then when I talk to their friends, or when I’ll get a little note from one of their professors or a teacher at school. You just don’t see it on the surface too often — but I know it’s in there.”