Reid Wiseman didn't used to think about the moon, but these days? "It's all I think about."
That's a natural pivot for Wiseman, who will command the first human moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972. He's in charge of the mission and the four humans who will go around the moon and back on the 10-day-long Artemis 2 mission, which is scheduled to launch no earlier than April 1.
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Wiseman also served as NASA's chief astronaut from 2020 to 2022. That position requires staying off active flight duty, as part of the responsibilities include selecting astronauts for missions. (Wiseman left that position in November 2022, well before Artemis 2's April 2023 crew announcement.)
Wiseman's crowded NASA biography includes some unusual personal touches. For example, it tells us that his wife Carroll, a registered nurse in a newborn intensive care unit, passed away from cancer in 2020, leaving Wiseman and two children behind.
"Despite a long list of professional accolades, Reid considers his time as an only parent as his greatest challenge and the most rewarding phase of his life," the biography states. Wiseman has also spoken openly about the nerves he felt ahead of the Artemis 2 crew announcement.
Wiseman sat down with Space.com at NASA's Johnson Space Center in September 2025 to talk about commanding Artemis 2, which also includes NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to leave LEO) and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American to do so). Their mission is designed to help pave the way for the first crewed moon landing since the Apollo era, which will take place on Artemis 4 in 2028 if all goes to plan. Here's what Wiseman said. (The following transcription has been edited for length and clarity.)
"One of the neat parts of this mission is, it's just a series of burns to increase our distance from Earth. It's really three primary burns. And we've developed a little checklist inside the crew. And the big one is translunar injection. This is committing us to eight days away from planet Earth, and are we ready to go? And we talk about that as a group, because the crew matters in that technical decision. So that is a neat way we've broken down this thought process. When you really get into the nuts and bolts of it, though, we are operators. And we know what is coming, and we know the risks, and we are ready to go take on those challenges.
"How do we prepare our families for that? It's difficult. I mean, it is definitely difficult. We are dealing with numbers that are very unique. We are going to be going Mach 39 when we hit Earth's atmosphere on reentry. We are going to go 250,000 miles [402,330 km] away from planet Earth. We're going to completely lose contact with Earth for 45 minutes on the far side of the moon. Those are big deals.
"And you know, I'm an only parent with two daughters, and they're teenagers. They understand the risk, but they also understand the value of human exploration, human ingenuity, that drive of humanity to go see what is on the other side of that mountain, to go see things that no human has ever seen before. Right now, there are only four humans on planet Earth that have this [new] opportunity, and I'm lucky to be one of them. And I'm flying with three of the best people I've ever met: Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. And to get to be a part of this? No one can say no to that.
"From the perspective of the four of us, it's NASA and American leadership that has created this opportunity. That is something that is important to us. We really want the whole world to feel like they are a part of this mission. I think that's good for our nation. It is good for America to make the whole world feel like they're a part of this. We are all on this journey together.
"The Artemis Accords are signed now by over 50 nations. We do have a vehicle [the Orion spacecraft] that's built in different countries and assembled here in the U.S., and we're going to launch from American soil. And that matters to me. My first mission was from Russia, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It really matters to me, as an American wearing this flag on my shoulder, that I'm going to launch from the Kennedy Space Center [in Florida]. That is a lifelong dream of mine.
"I'm a human, and so there's really two things [in training] that I have found very profound. We did a simulation the other day, and Earthrise occurred in that simulation. It doesn't look quite like [the famous photo by] Apollo 8, because they cropped and zoomed in that picture. Yeah, but the Earth is really small, and it's really gorgeous. And so just being able to process that, from the human side. You can hear it in the Apollo 8 audio that we've recorded. You can tell that was fascinating and unexpected to them. So I can't wait to feel that.
"But then the other thing — when I stand on the surface of Earth now, and I look at the moon at night — and I might see a waxing gibbous, but I know now on the far side that's a waning crescent. I'm flipping my brain around to all of those things, and just understanding that. Like, I've never spent time in my entire life thinking about that. But now it's all I think about.
"I try very hard in my professional career to remind people that we are humans. We are not these exceptional beings. We are sometimes careless, we're sometimes foolish, we sometimes make the wrong decision. But at the end of the day, we try to execute with absolute professionalism and excellence. Like, that is what we're aiming for. And I'm seeing my crew get to that point, and it takes work, but we're humans. I mean, like, just come sit down and talk to me. Have a cup of coffee with me. Hopefully I can make you laugh, and hopefully you can make me laugh.
"We are very much more alike than people would understand. And I think that comes from my military service, from being in the Navy and traveling the world on aircraft carriers. I think some people think that the flying was the best part, or defending the country was the best part.
"But for me, honestly, the best part was pulling into these various ports in the Middle East, in Europe, in Japan, in Australia. And when you go out and meet these people that you think were your enemies, or you think you're in conflict with — if you meet them in their environment and you meet them as human beings — maybe with their family, you realize we all are the same. We're all fighting for the same thing. We really all just love each other. We love our families, we love our friends. That is what it is to be a human. And so the more that I have worked around the planet, the more I realize, like, this is us. This is who we are."
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