The Moon commander is coming to Pasadena’s backyard
Reid Wiseman, the astronaut who commanded Artemis II on its flight around the Moon, will join Caltech as associate vice president and deputy director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on November 30, 2026. The announcement came October 28 from Caltech and JPL.
It is a notable hire for the lab in the foothills above Pasadena. JPL is NASA’s center for robotic and deep-space exploration, managed by Caltech for the space agency, and it is approaching the 90th anniversary of its founding by Caltech. Its next deputy director is a man who has flown farther from Earth than any human in history.
What the job covers
As Caltech associate vice president and JPL deputy director, Wiseman will be responsible for the strategic leadership, stewardship, and continuous improvement of laboratory operations, including close partnership with Caltech on institutional planning, management, and compliance. He will serve as Center Management Authority for JPL mission execution, and as the lab’s primary interface for national security programs.
JPL director and Caltech vice president Dave Gallagher said Wiseman “shares our drive for discovery, knows what it takes to lead teams through high-stakes missions, and has a remarkable ability to inspire people everywhere. He adds incredible bench strength to our leadership team as we build on the lab’s legacy and shape its future together.”
Who he is
Wiseman joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2009. He served as a flight engineer aboard the International Space Station during the 165-day Expedition 41 mission in 2014, commanded NASA’s 21st Extreme Environment Mission Operations expedition — eight days in a habitat on the ocean floor in 2016 — and served as NASA’s chief astronaut from December 2020 to November 2022, overseeing crew flight readiness and safety for all NASA human spaceflight missions.
Then came Artemis II. Wiseman commanded the test flight, with Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen aboard, on a lunar flyby that covered 695,081 miles and took the crew farther from Earth than any humans have ever traveled.
“I’ve explored the furthest reaches of what a human can explore at NASA — and there were truly no words in the English vocabulary to describe seeing the Sun disappear behind the Moon from deep space,” Wiseman said in the announcement. “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.”
Before NASA, Wiseman earned a bachelor’s degree in computer and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, joined the Navy, flew combat missions, and served as a test pilot. He also holds a master’s degree in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He is a retired U.S. Navy captain and now an emeritus astronaut.
Why it matters here
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman put it this way: “Reid has spent his career at the edge of what is possible, and he has the technical judgment, operational experience, and leadership to help push that edge farther. As commander of Artemis II, he helped carry America back around the Moon, and now, as an emeritus astronaut, he will continue giving back to NASA from a new vantage point at JPL.”
Caltech president Ray Jayawardhana called Wiseman “a force-multiplier for a community whose daring continues to push the limits of humanity’s reach.”
The appointment also says something about where JPL is headed. The lab built its reputation on robotic spacecraft — rovers on Mars, probes in interstellar space — while human spaceflight lived mostly elsewhere in NASA. Bringing in a just-flown human mission commander as deputy director, as the lab marks 90 years, bridges those two worlds. For Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, it means one of the most recognizable astronauts of the Artemis era will be working a few miles up the Arroyo Seco.
One question worth watching: how much of Wiseman’s public-facing role carries over into a job that is mostly about running a laboratory. JPL has always done its talking through its missions. Its new deputy director has done his talking from a spacecraft.
Sources: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “Caltech Names Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman as NASA JPL Deputy,” October 28, 2026 (jpl.nasa.gov).
