President Donald Trump honored four astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center following their April mission around the moon.
The four astronauts who completed NASA’s Artemis II lunar flyby in April received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Friday at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
President Donald Trump presented the awards to NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The mission marked the first crewed trip to the moon’s vicinity in more than 50 years and took the crew farther from Earth than any humans had previously traveled.
Artemis II launched April 1 and splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean on April 10 after a nearly 10-day test flight aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft, named Integrity. NASA said the crew traveled 252,756 miles from Earth at its farthest point and flew 695,081 miles overall.
The medal, created by Congress in 1969, recognizes astronauts for exceptionally brave and meritorious service. NASA said the Artemis II crew were the first recipients since 2023.
The ceremony also included Trump’s announcement of a planned U.S. Space Academy intended to serve the Space Force, NASA and the commercial space sector. The academy’s location has not been determined.
NASA is preparing Artemis III, a planned low-Earth-orbit docking and rendezvous test, followed by Artemis IV, which the agency says is intended to return astronauts to the lunar surface.
