Somewhere in the days before launch, Reid Wiseman sat his two daughters down and walked them through the family will. Here's where the documents are. Here's what happens to you if I don't come back. Ellie is 20. Katherine is 17. Their mother Carroll died of breast cancer in 2020, at 46. She was a NICU nurse in Friendswood, Texas — the kind of person who spent her days keeping other people's babies alive. Reid has raised the girls alone since.
Who's Who?
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Reid Wiseman — Told his teenagers where the will was, then flew to the Moon. -
CTCarroll Taylor Wiseman — A NICU nurse from Texas who died at 46 — now her name is on the Moon.
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Victor Glover — First Black man beyond low Earth orbit. Told his wife he loved her from the Moon. -
Christina Koch — Met her husband at a research station in American Samoa. First to speak after the far-side blackout. -
Jeremy Hansen — His voice broke when he asked mission control to put Carroll's name on the Moon. -
DGDionna Glover — Raised four daughters through a NASA career. Heard six words from the Moon.
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Jim Lovell — Recorded a wake-up call for the crew two months before he died at 97. -
Jared Isaacman — Former commercial astronaut who put four people on a rocket to the Moon.
One of them — he won't say which — snuck homemade cookies into his flight bag. He found them after he was already strapped into the Orion spacecraft, 50 years old, the oldest human to ever leave low Earth orbit. "My heart can't take it," he said. On April 1, 2026, at 6:35 PM, the SLS rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center. The first crewed mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Fifty-three years.
Victor Glover is the pilot. Former F/A-18 fighter pilot, 49, married to Dionna for over two decades, father of four daughters — Genesis, Maya, Joia, and Corinne. When the spacecraft swung around the far side of the Moon, he became the first Black man to travel beyond low Earth orbit. His daughter Maya went viral on TikTok — 9.3 million views — celebrating her dad. On Easter Sunday, from deeper in space than any human has ever been on a holiday, Glover recorded a message. "In all of this emptiness — this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together." Then, during the lunar flyby, six words to Dionna, who was watching from the viewing gallery at mission control: "I love you from the moon."
Christina Koch is the mission specialist who makes this flight historic in a different way — the first woman beyond low Earth orbit. She'd already held the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, 328 days on the International Space Station. She met her husband Robert, an engineer, at a remote research station in American Samoa, which tells you something about the kind of life she's built. When the spacecraft emerged from behind the far side of the Moon and comms came back online, Koch was the first to speak. "We will explore, we will build, we will build ships, we will visit again… but — ultimately — we will always choose Earth, we will always choose each other."
Jeremy Hansen is the one who broke everyone. Royal Canadian Air Force colonel from London, Ontario, the first non-American to fly beyond low Earth orbit. Married to Catherine, an OB-GYN. Three teenagers at home. On Flight Day 6, as the Orion spacecraft — which the crew had named Integrity — pushed past Apollo 13's 55-year distance record by more than 4,000 miles, reaching 252,756 miles from Earth, Hansen keyed his mic to mission control. He wanted to name a bright crater on the Moon's far side. "It's a bright spot on the Moon," he said, his voice breaking. He wanted to call it Carroll. After Wiseman's wife. All four astronauts embraced. Everyone aboard was in tears.
There was another voice on that mission, too. On Flight Day 6, the crew woke up to a recording. Jim Lovell — the Apollo 13 commander whose distance record they were about to break — had taped a message for them two months before he died in August 2025, at 97. "Welcome to my old neighborhood," Lovell told them. The crew was approaching the exact stretch of space where Lovell's crew had fought to survive in 1970. This time, the neighborhood was a little more welcoming.
Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator who greenlit Artemis II, had been a commercial astronaut himself — he flew Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn before being confirmed as the agency's 15th administrator in December 2025. He approved proceeding with the existing heat shield after reviewing the analysis. That decision put four people on a rocket.
As of today, April 8, the crew has completed the flyby and is heading home. Splashdown is expected April 10 off the coast of San Diego, where the USS John P. Murtha will be waiting. The crater names — Carroll and Integrity — have been proposed but still need formal approval from the International Astronomical Union. In Friendswood, Texas, there's a school where Carroll Wiseman used to work as the nurse. In a house nearby, two daughters are waiting for their father to come back from the Moon. He told them where the will was. They sent him cookies.