The Artemis II crew has proposed naming a newly identified crater “Carroll” in honor of mission commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died of cancer on May 17, 2020, at the age of 46.
Shortly after 2 p.m. EDT on April 6, while speaking to Mission Control in Houston during the lunar flyby, Artemis II mission specialist Jeremy Hansen became emotional, saying:
“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.” The approximate coordinates of Carroll crater are 18.84° N, 86.51° W.
The Artemis II crew also proposed naming another newly identified crater “Integrity” in honor of their spacecraft and this historic mission. The approximate coordinates of Integrity crater are 2.66° N, 104.92° W.
After this mission is complete, the crater name proposals will be formally submitted to the International Astronomical Union, the organization that governs the naming of celestial bodies and their surface features.
The Artemis II crew are now returning home after successfully completing a historic seven-hour lunar flyby.
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