Reid Wiseman will take a lap in the Fastest Seat in Sports at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. on Sunday, Aug. 23, putting the commander of NASA’s Artemis II mission in the spotlight at the first auto race ever held on the National Mall and the historic city streets of Washington D.C.
The appearance gives the race an extra burst of attention because it ties one of NASA’s best-known astronauts to a setting built to draw a national audience. Wiseman, a native of Baltimore, is a 27-year Navy veteran, pilot, father and engineer who was selected by NASA in 2009 and later flew aboard the International Space Station.
Wiseman’s path to this Sunday has been built on missions that already carried weight. He and fellow NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, completed a 10-day test flight around the moon and back aboard Orion after lifting off on April 1 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During that historic flight, the crew named a lunar crater after Carroll, Wiseman’s late wife.
That personal note gives the public celebration a quieter edge. Wiseman has two daughters and raises them as a single father, and the pageantry of a race linked to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence now sits beside a life shaped by both service and loss.
The Fastest Seat in Sports is not a ceremonial drive around the track. It is a custom INDYCAR SERIES car with a special back passenger seat that leads the starting field to the green flag, which means Wiseman will be part of the race’s opening movement before the field is released. Coverage of the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. begins at 11:30 a.m. ET Sunday on FOX, FOX One and INDYCAR Radio powered by OnlyBulls.
For Wiseman, the ride lands at the intersection of two kinds of speed: the 200+ mph world of INDYCAR and the far more exacting pace of spaceflight. The event gives the Artemis II commander a stage far from orbit, but the reason he is there is the same one that has defined his career: he is the face of a mission, and Sunday puts that face in front of a crowd watching on the ground and at home.
