Reporting by Eric Lagatta, USA Today Network/Palm Springs Desert Sun
The commander of the Artemis II mission will become the second crew member to head to California following April’s trailblazing journey around the moon.
Reid Wiseman, who in September announced he would transition to an emeritus role at the U.S. space agency, will officially begin a dual role at both Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena at the end of November, according to an announcement.
The news comes more than a month after Wiseman and Victor Glover jointly announced their decisions to hang up their spacesuits after each made their second trip to space. Glover, the pilot on the Artemis II mission, soon announced his next career move would be to take a full-time administrative leadership position at his alma mater, the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
But until now, it remained unclear just what specifically was next for Wiseman.
What’s more, since the Artemis II mission came to an end with a splashdown near San Diego, all four crew members have stepped away from spaceflight as they eye the next chapters in their careers.
Here’s what to know about Wiseman’s new position.
Artemis II commander takes new job at Caltech, NASA’s JPL
Effective Nov. 30, Wiseman will become the associate vice president at Caltech, as well as the deputy director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles County in Southern California. Founded by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech,) the laboratory, commonly known as JPL, is NASA’s only federally funded research and development center.
In the position, Wiseman will serve in a leadership role overseeing laboratory operations and “mission execution,” NASA and JPL said in separate press releases.
“Reid brings to Caltech and JPL a truly unprecedented view of what humanity can achieve when ingenuity and determination are matched with the courage to pursue the furthest frontiers,” Caltech President Ray Jayawardhana said in a statement. “His pioneering spirit coupled with unbounded curiosity make him a natural fit.”
In his own statement, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman lauded Wiseman for a career spent “at the edge of what is possible.”
“Reid is joining a storied laboratory that has made an enormous amount of history, and there is a lot more ahead,” Isaacman said.
The news was announced Oct. 28 at a space-related event hosted at Caltech, where a recorded video message from Wiseman was shown to the crowd.
“I’ve explored the furthest reaches of what a human can explore at NASA,” Wiseman said in the video. “But that experience was really the jumping-off point to go do the impossible things that Caltech and JPL dream, dare together, and do for NASA and the nation.”
Who is Reid Wiseman?
Wiseman served as the commander of the Artemis II mission.
A decorated veteran Navy aviator, 50-year-old Reid Wiseman served on two deployments to the Middle East and trained as a test pilot before he was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2009.
Wiseman has been to space one other time. In 2014, Wiseman spent about six months at the International Space Station, where he completed two spacewalks and helped the crew set a station record by completing 82 hours of research in a single week.
Wiseman, a Baltimore native, is a single father of two children, having lost his wife Carroll Taylor Wiseman in 2020 to cancer.
What was the Artemis II mission?
In April, Wiseman joined NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen on the Artemis II mission. The second mission under NASA’s multibillion-dollar Artemis program, Artemis II marked the first time humans flew near the moon in more than 50 years and set the stage for a potential crewed landing as early as 2028.
The four astronauts rode in NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which hitched a ride to space atop NASA’s powerful 322-foot Space Launch System rocket during an April 1 launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the 10-day spaceflight, the Orion vehicle carried the astronauts around the moon and back to Earth without landing on the lunar surface.
Along the way, Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen surpassed a record set during the infamous Apollo 13 mission in 1970 – traveling a historic 252,756 miles from Earth. They also bore witness to sights of the moon’s far side never before seen by human eyes while traveling as close as 4,067 miles above the surface during a lunar flyby.
Three of the astronauts also made individual history. Hansen became the first Canadian selected for a moon mission, while Koch became the first woman and Glover the first Black man.
All 4 Artemis II crew members step away from spaceflight
Since the mission came to an end, all four Artemis II crew members have stepped away from spaceflight.
It began in July, when Hansen said he would step back from a full-time astronaut role as well with the Canadian Space Agency.
In September, Wiseman and Glover, the mission’s pilot, jointly announced their plans to transition to an emeritus role at NASA. Instead of officially retiring, Glover and Wiseman intend to essentially serve as consultants to NASA while seeking other professional opportunities.
“There are a lot of neat opportunities as we work to grow our science and industrial base, our partnerships with other universities, and our partnerships with corporate America,” Glover said of his new position at Cal Poly in an interview with the USA TODAY Network.
NASA then in October announced that Koch would become NASA’s acting deputy chief engineer. While Koch technically remains in active service, she will not be eligible for future spaceflight assignments while in the position, NASA said.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA Today Network. Reach him at elagatta@usatodayco.com. Contributing: Noe Padilla, USA Today Network.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun.
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