Who Was Artemis II Astronaut Reid Wiseman’s Wife Carroll? All About Their Love Story
What To Know
- Reid Wiseman is part of the Artemis II NASA mission in April 2026.
- During the crew’s lunar flyby, the astronauts honored Reid’s late wife by proposing to name a moon crater after her.
- Reid’s late wife, Carroll, died in 2020.
The Artemis II astronauts shared an emotional moment during their lunar flyby. Not only did they reach the farthest distance ever traveled by humans in space — which is estimated to be about 250,000 miles from Earth — but they also made a tribute to astronaut Reid Wiseman’s late wife.
Reid married Anne Carroll Taylor Wiseman (née Taylor) in 2003. Carroll died in 2020, and Reid made sure to honor his wife on his space mission. Learn more about their relationship, the crater named after her, and more.
Who was Reid Wiseman’s wife?
Carroll was born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and according to her husband’s NASA bio, she “dedicated her life to helping others as a newborn intensive care unit Registered Nurse.” She shared daughters Ellie and Katherine with Reid, who wrote on Instagram before launch, “I love these two ladies, and I’m boarding that rocket a very proud father.”
“They would rather I not go,” Wiseman said in an interview with CBS. “They would definitely rather I be a stay-at-home dad and hang out. But they also know that this is a unique opportunity. You know, the parents have to live their dreams just like the kids have to live their dreams.”
His wife was equally supportive of his career. “When she really started getting sick, I wanted to move us back towards where her family was from,” Wiseman told CBS. “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.”
Before her death, Carroll studied at James Madison University and Virginia Commonwealth University, and after graduation, worked at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters and as a school nurse in Maryland, per her obituary. She took on the same job when her family moved to Friendswood, Texas.
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What happened to Carroll Wiseman?
Carroll was diagnosed with cancer soon after Reid’s first spaceflight in 2014, per The Baltimore Banner. Five years later, Carroll died on May 17, 2020, due to cancer complications. She was 46 years old.
Since then, her husband has been a single dad, and he said that raising their daughters on his own has been the greatest challenge and the most rewarding phase of his life.
What is the Carroll crater?
When the astronauts spotted a moon crater from the Orion capsule on April 6, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said, “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. There’s a feature on the Moon, a bright spot near the Glushko Crater and at the same latitude as Ohm Crater. We would like to call it Carroll.”
After the astronauts return on April 10, they’ll submit the crater name proposal to the International Astronomical Union, according to NASA.
