Four astronauts will venture farther from Earth than humans have ever gone before when NASA launches its Artemis II mission, led by Cockeysville native and mission commander Reid Wiseman.
A graduate of Dulaney High School (’93) and Johns Hopkins University (’06), the 50-year-old Wiseman will head the voyage traveling approximately 4,700 miles beyond the far side of the Moon — far enough away that the Moon will appear the size of a basketball held at arm’s length for the Artemis II crew. Their journey will shatter the current record of a 158-mile altitude from the lunar surface, set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.
Wiseman’s three fellow crew members — NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will be the first Black person, the first woman, and the first non-American, respectively, to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Artemis II will also be the first crewed mission to the Moon in 54 years since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
But on the precipice of this historic moment, Wiseman has avoided imagining what the far side of the Moon will be like or pondering what it means to follow in the footsteps of previous mission commanders…