Artemis II Stuns Space Fans with Breathtaking Moon Photos, Alongside the Incredible Love Story Behind a New Crater Named Carroll

Nearly 250,000 miles from Earth, Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew named a lunar crater after his late wife. The photos of the couple and the views from space are all waiting below.

When the Artemis II crew trained their cameras on the lunar surface from nearly a quarter of a million miles away last week, they ended up sending back far more than images of distant rock and ancient craters — they sent back an incredible love story.

The historic Artemis II mission launched on 1 April 2026, when Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Jeremy Hansen set off on a 10-day journey aboard the Orion capsule.

Later, in a video posted to NASA's Instagram on 6 April, all four astronauts floated in the spacecraft as Hansen addressed the camera, explaining that after spending the morning examining the craters with the naked eye and through a long lens, they had decided to propose names for two of them.

"If you were to look at Orientale on the far side and then draw a line straight up to Ohm on the far side, relatively in the middle is an unnamed crater and we would like to suggest it be called Integrity in the future," Hansen says in the clip, in honour of their spacecraft.

The mood in the capsule then shifts entirely. "And the second one, and especially meaningful for this crew, is a number of years ago, we started this journey and our close-knit astronaut family and we lost a loved one," he continues.

"We lost a loved one, her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katey and Ellie. [The crater is] a bright spot on the moon and we would like to call it Carroll," Hansen shares, spelling the name aloud for the record.

As those words settled, Wiseman, seated beside him, wiped away tears and clasped his hands together. He then placed his hand on Hansen's shoulder and the two embraced. Moments later, the other astronauts, both visibly moved, wrapped their arms around the pair.

Carroll Taylor Wiseman was 46 years old when she passed away on 17 May 2020, after five years with cancer. She is survived by her husband, their daughters, her parents, a brother, a sister, and seven nieces and nephews.

According to NASA's website, Wiseman's late wife spent her life helping others as a newborn intensive care unit Registered Nurse. In the years since her passing, her husband has considered being a widowed parent as the greatest challenge yet most rewarding part of his life.

After viewing the touching moment, netizens responded with open hearts. "How beautiful. Just goes to show you that in the midst of all, what really matters is our loved ones and that death has not parted us," one person wrote, while another simply typed, "Love her to the moon and back."

"Bro flew as close as he can get to heaven [sic] 😭🥹🙏," a third commenter shared, and a fourth added, "What an amazing loving man 🙏🏼🤲🇺🇸 blessed her soul let her be resting in peace! Best of luck for the girls and dad! Amen [sic]."

The naming was not the only milestone of that day. The crew also surpassed a record distance of 248,655 miles from Earth on 6 April, breaking the previous record set during the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.

Still, the crater naming was the emotional centrepiece of a mission Reid had been building towards for years. The quartet are travelling further from Earth than any group of humans in history, sending images and messages home throughout.

On 3 February 2026, he shared a photo of his crew on Instagram alongside the caption, "The crew just shared a peaceful breakfast with our families and we jump back into training tomorrow to start our preps for a March launch to the Moon."

Just before liftoff, he took a selfie with his daughters in front of the spacecraft he would be commanding for the next 10 days. "I love these two ladies, and I'm boarding that rocket a very proud father," Wiseman shared.

Since then, from deep space, he has kept the world close. One photograph, taken through the Orion capsule window, shows the silhouette of an astronaut gazing at the glowing, cloud-wrapped planet below. Reid posted it with the four words, "There are no words."

That photograph alone drew over 1.3 million likes at the time of writing. For those who saw it, it was their first glimpse of what the crew had been looking at all week — Earth, glowing and cloud-wrapped, cradled in the window of a capsule that had travelled further from home than any crew before it.

Meanwhile, somewhere on the surface of the moon, visible from Earth at just the right angle and the right time, is a bright crater that now carries a name. Carroll. The photos of the couple and the views from space are all below.