Meet Artemis II Astronaut Reid Wiseman

[0:00]The moon to me, it's the thing that connects me together with all the other humans in my life. I remember being a a little kid lying in bed at night and just looking out at the moon in whatever phase it was in, and I was thinking, man, my friends that live like 20 miles away, they can probably look out and see that same exact moon. And then when I was in the Navy and I was I would look out at the moon, and I'd be halfway around the planet, and I would think, man, my brother can see that moon where he is, and he's halfway around the planet from where I am. To me, it's it's a connection of life on Earth. We can all look up and see that moon, and it's always changing. The moon is never the same two days in a row. I love that. My name is Reid Wiseman. I'm the commander of NASA's Artemis 2 mission around the moon. I grew up in a little town just north of Baltimore, Maryland, about 20 miles north of the city. There was a National Guard base nearby my house, and there were A10 aircraft that would fly over every now and then. I just would look up at them and be like, man, I want to be up there. I want to go do that. And then my brother went to Naval Academy, and I would go every year and watch the Blue Angels fly during commencement. And that just started to grow and grow and grow. For a while, I wanted to join the Air Force, and then I realized Navy flies as well, and they fly from ships in the middle of the ocean. And that was it, like, done deal for me. That is exactly what I wanted to do for my career. Flying is freedom to me, especially when you're in a in a jet aircraft coming off of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Nearest land is over 1500 miles away. So when you come off of that aircraft carrier, you are truly just alone with yourself out there. It is a magical experience to be out there all by yourself in an aircraft over the Pacific just it's free. I think anybody who accomplishes something that they set their mind out to, there's there's no one thing that does it for them. It's a combination of everything. I mean, the way my parents raised me, the way my brother and I, the way our relationship developed over time, my friends, being in the marching band, going to college, setting my own course, learning how to live on my own, being mentored along the way, being, you know, kept on the path to success, but being given the freedom to, you know, make excursions and fail every now and then and regroup and carry on. I think all those things come together in the end to to get you where you are. I've had to overcome, I mean, I'm a human being. I've I've had to overcome a lot of fears. I'm pretty scared of heights. I joked about that on the International Space Station, but it turns out I'm only scared like at the edge of a building. When you're up on the International Space Station, even though you're 250 miles up, I never had that feeling of falling or that I was, you know, at risk up there. I I just kind of loved the feeling of floating and looking down at Earth. There have been challenges all throughout my life. By far, the biggest challenge was losing my wife in 2020 to cancer, and now raising two daughters, uh, who are grown up now, but that's been the biggest challenge by far I've ever had to face. It is not easy being an only parent, trying to work a full-time job, and raising two kids, is something that I think about every single day. I'm very proud of the work I've done. I haven't always done it well, but I've always shown up and tried as hard as I possibly can.