Maryland Astronaut Selected For Artemis II Mission To Fly Past Moon

BALTIMORE, MD — A Maryland astronaut will blast off into space and fly around the moon. NASA announced on Monday that Commander Reid Wiseman of Baltimore will join the Artemis II mission.

The crew for this Artemis II mission will be:

• Commander Reid Wiseman of Baltimore
• Pilot Victor Glover of Pomona, California
• Mission Specialist 1 Christina Hammock Koch, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Mission Specialist 2 Jeremy Hansen of London, Ontario, Canada

Wiseman is a Baltimore County native, graduating from Dulaney High School in Timonium in 1993. In 1997, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. The Maryland astronaut also served in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, also known as the ROTC, while in college.

Wiseman was then commissioned into the Navy after graduation and reported to Pensacola, Florida, for flight training. He became a Naval Aviator in 1999.

Wiseman served around the country, spending a portion of his service at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in southern Maryland. He later served as a strike operations officer and was deployed around South America.

The Navy veteran also earned a Master of Science degree in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 2006. Two years later, he later completed a Certificate of Space Systems at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

NASA selected Wiseman to join its 20th astronaut class in 2009. He completed training in 2011.

Wiseman took his first and only trip to space in 2014, completing a 165-day mission aboard the International Space Station. He and his crewmates conducted more than 300 experiments on human physiology, medicine, physical science, Earth science and astrophysics.

Wiseman also tallied nearly 13 hours of spacewalks during two trips outside the station.

Wiseman's Artemis II mission will launch no earlier than November 2024, USA Today reported.

“The Artemis II crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a Monday press release. “This is their crew, this is our crew, this is humanity's crew.”

The roughly 10-day mission will travel more than 230,000 miles from Earth and fly about 6,400 miles beyond the Moon.

NASA hopes Artemis II will prove that its rocket, spacecraft and systems are strong enough to sustain human life in deep space.

The crew will splash down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California at the end of the mission.

This follows the uncrewed Artemis I mission in December 2022, and it is part of NASA's plan to return to the moon and eventually land a human on Mars.

“For the first time in more than 50 years, these individuals – the Artemis II crew – will be the first humans to fly to the vicinity of the Moon,” said Director Vanessa Wyche from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Among the crew are the first woman, first person of color, and first Canadian on a lunar mission, and all four astronauts will represent the best of humanity as they explore for the benefit of all.”

More information on the mission is posted here. To read Wiseman's full biography, click this link.

Wiseman has amassed more than 500,000 Twitter followers while documenting his life as an Astronaut. Twitter users can follow him @astro_reid.

This article was originally published in the Baltimore Patch by Jacob Baumgart, Patch Staff.