Bright Spot on Moon named in honour of Artemis II astronaut’s late wife

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New Delhi: Shortly after breaking the human spaceflight record for the greatest distance travelled from Earth set over 50 years ago by the Apollo 13 crew, the Artemis II crew consisting of Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen proposed names for two new craters on the Moon. After the completion of the mission, the new names will be formally submitted to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the official body that is responsible for naming celestial bodies and surface features, which will review the proposals. Until accepted, these names are provisional.

Shortly after 2 p.m. EDT, the crew described two small, unnamed craters on the heavily pockmarked lunar surface. Calling down to Earth, they suggested provisional names for them. Just northwest of Orientale basin, highlighted above, is a crater they would like to name Integrity after their spacecraft and this historic mission. Just northeast of the Integrity crater, on the near and far side boundary, and sometimes visible from Earth, the crew suggested an unnamed crater be designated Carroll in honor of Reid Weisman’s wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who passed away on May 17, 2020. After this mission is complete, the crater name proposals will be formally submitted to the International Astronomical Union, an organization that governs the naming of celestial bodies and their surface features.

The locations of the two craters the Artemis II crew has proposed names for. (Image Credit: NASA).

Hansen said, “Our science teams helped us out with a couple of relatively fresh craters on the Moon that have not been previously named. Our crew would like to propose couple of potential names for those areas. The first one we would like to suggest is a named crater in honour of our great spacecraft, Integrity. 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 that it be called Integrity in the future.” The crew had picked Integrity as the name of their Orion spaceship.

Crater named in memory of Hansen’s late wife

The second proposal made the crew emotional as the message was being delivered. Hansen said, “The second one, and especially meaningful for this crew is, a number of years ago we started this journey with our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one. There is a feature in a really neat place on the Moon, it is on the near side, far side boundary. In fact, it is just on the near side of that boundary, so at certain times of the Moon’s transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth. We lost a loved one, her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. If you want to find this one, you look at Glushko, and it is just to the northwest of that, at the same latitude as Ohm, and it is a bright spot on the Moon.” This was followed by a group hug.