SCIENCE · VERIFIED DEVELOPMENT
President Trump Awards Congressional Space Medal of Honor to Artemis II Crew
WHY IT MATTERS
The medal recognizes the crew’s record‑setting flight and signals U.S. leadership, directly supporting the next Artemis missions that will establish a lunar base and lay groundwork for Mars travel.
What happened
On August 28, 2026, President Donald J. Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The award honored the crew’s historic Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1, 2026, and returned on April 10 after a 252,756‑mile lunar flyby and a total of 695,081 miles—surpassing the Apollo 13 record. The ceremony highlighted the crew’s first flight on the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, and celebrated the engineers, scientists and international partners who enabled the mission’s success.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman noted that Artemis II sets the stage for the 2027 Artemis III test flight and the 2028 Artemis IV lunar surface landing, advancing plans for a long‑term Moon base and future Mars exploration.
PRIMARY SOURCES
President Honors NASA’s Artemis II Crew with Highest US Space Award
NASA · Jessica Taveau · NASA media usage guidelines; third-party material excluded