Trump Awards Artemis II Crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor

President Donald Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission on Friday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, according to reporting by ABC7 News and by KATV. The recipients were Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The four flew a 10-day mission around the Moon in April, according to ABC7 News. KATV described it as the first crewed trip around the Moon in more than 50 years and said the crew traveled farther from Earth than any humans before them. ABC7 News reported that the astronauts are still adjusting to life back on Earth and to the attention the mission has drawn.

Congress authorized the medal in 1969. The law says it may go to any astronaut who has distinguished himself through “exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the Nation and of mankind,” as ABC7 News put it. The first recipients, in 1978, were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, John Glenn, Virgil “Gus” Grissom and Alan Shepard. According to KATV, Trump said only 30 people had received the medal before Friday, among them astronauts who died in the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia disasters.

In his remarks, as quoted by KATV, Trump said the crew’s “immense courage and service” took them “further from Earth than anyone has ever traveled before.” He called the mission “absolutely flawless” and said it had renewed public enthusiasm for space exploration. He also paid tribute to Wiseman’s late wife, Carol, who died of cancer; KATV reported that the crew named a lunar crater for her.

The president used the occasion to sign an executive order to start a “U.S. Space Academy,” ABC7 News reported. According to KATV, the order does not create the academy itself. It sets up a presidential commission with 120 days to recommend the academy’s structure, curriculum, location, funding and any service requirements for graduates. The order says the academy would train astronauts, scientists, engineers, operators, entrepreneurs, civil servants and military personnel, not only members of the Space Force. ABC7 News gave no further details about the plan.

Trump also laid out goals for the space program, KATV reported: returning astronauts to the lunar surface before the end of his term, establishing a permanent American settlement on the Moon, and then sending crews to Mars. He said NASA has begun work on a nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft planned for a 2028 Mars mission. Those are the administration’s stated aims, and the reports did not include schedules or budgets that would show how they will be met.

For NASA, the ceremony marks the formal recognition of a mission that had already drawn wide public attention after the crew returned in April. The commission’s recommendations are due roughly four months after the order, which would put them around the end of December.