Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman Takes New Roles at Caltech and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II lunar flyby, will start new roles at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the end of November 2026.
The Reid Wiseman new role announcement came on 28 October 2026, when Caltech said the commander of the Artemis II mission would take up a dual post in California at the end of November. Wiseman will become associate vice president at Caltech and deputy director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, starting on 30 November. The move follows his flight around the Moon earlier in 2026, when he commanded a crew of four on the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years. In September, Wiseman had announced that he would move to an emeritus role at the space agency, and the October announcement set out the next stage of his career in research leadership and laboratory management.
Artemis II launched on 1 April 2026 and returned to Earth on 10 April, after a mission lasting nine days, one hour and 32 minutes. Wiseman flew with NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The crew travelled around the Moon and back without landing, testing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket on a crewed flight for the first time. The mission also set a new record for the greatest distance travelled from Earth by people, reaching about 252,756 miles, beyond the mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970. Since the splashdown near San Diego, all four crew members have stepped away from spaceflight and moved toward new chapters, with Wiseman and Glover announcing their emeritus plans in September.
Reid Wiseman new role follows historic lunar flyby
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known as JPL, is a federally funded research centre managed by Caltech for NASA, and it leads robotic exploration missions across the solar system. Wiseman’s new posts place a recent lunar mission commander in a senior leadership position at the heart of that work, linking crewed spaceflight experience with the laboratory’s robotic science and engineering programmes. Caltech announced the appointment at a space-related event, where a recorded video message from Wiseman was shown to the audience. The timing, at the end of November, gives him a short break after the mission year before he begins the new posts in Pasadena, in Los Angeles County.
Source: The Desert Sun
