Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman is leaving astronaut life to become JPL’s deputy director

Caltech has named Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman as its associate vice president and deputy director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. According to NASA, he starts on Nov. 30, 2026.

A Moon flyby veteran takes a lab management job

Wiseman is now an emeritus astronaut, a title for a former astronaut who stays connected to the agency, and a retired U.S. Navy captain. JPL is NASA’s center for robotics and deep space exploration, and Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, manages it for NASA.

On the Artemis II test flight, Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen flew a lunar flyby of 695,081 miles, which NASA says took them farther than any humans have traveled. For how the capsule fared on its return, see our report on the Artemis II heat shield.

His earlier career, as NASA describes it, includes a 165-day stay on the International Space Station in 2014 as flight engineer for Expedition 41. In 2016 he commanded an underwater mission, living eight days in a habitat on the ocean floor. From December 2020 to November 2022 he was NASA’s chief astronaut, responsible for crew flight readiness and safety on all NASA human spaceflight missions.

What the deputy director actually does

The role is management, not spaceflight. Wiseman will lead the strategy, stewardship and continuous improvement of laboratory operations, working closely with Caltech on planning, management and compliance. He will also act as Center Management Authority for JPL mission execution, which means making sure the support functions behind each mission meet NASA requirements and federal and state rules.

One piece stands apart from the rest: he will be JPL’s primary contact for national security programs. JPL is NASA’s only federally funded research and development center, a lab the government funds but a university operates.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Wiseman “has the technical judgment, operational experience, and leadership to help push that edge farther.” JPL director Dave Gallagher said Wiseman “knows what it takes to lead teams through high-stakes missions” and adds “bench strength” to the leadership team.

Wiseman has a bachelor’s degree in computer and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University. In the Navy he flew combat missions and served as a test pilot.

The lab he inherits, and the dates to watch

The first date is Nov. 30, when he takes up the post. The second is JPL’s 90th anniversary. NASA’s anniversary feature traces the lab to Caltech graduate students and friends who made their first rocket firing on Halloween 1936 in a dry riverbed, where JPL was later built. That gives the new deputy a long institutional history to manage, and a milestone year in which the lab is setting out its next decades.

The scope of his work will show in the lab’s current projects. JPL runs missions as different as the Perseverance rover on Mars and Earth-observing satellites, and NASA’s announcement says Wiseman will answer for how mission operations are supported across all of them. The announcement does not say whether he will take part in selecting science targets or in missions’ technical decisions, so his job appears to be the operating machinery rather than the science itself.

Caltech president Ray Jayawardhana said he looks forward to working with Gallagher and Wiseman “as we chart our next era of exploration in partnership with NASA.” Wiseman himself called it “an awesome time in my career to join this team.”