AUGUST 22, 2026

Trump to award Congressional Space Medal of Honor to Artemis II crew at Johnson Space Center ceremony

President Donald Trump is scheduled to award the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four Artemis II astronauts on August 28 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — flew the first crewed Orion spacecraft mission in April, traveling a record 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the Apollo 13 distance record set in 1970.

The Artemis II mission launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center aboard NASA's Space Launch System rocket, generating 8.8 million pounds of thrust. The crew passed within 4,067 miles of the lunar surface during an April 6 flyby and covered a total of 695,081 miles over nearly 10 days before Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off California on April 10.

At their farthest point, the four astronauts were 252,756 miles from Earth, eclipsing the human spaceflight distance record previously held by the Apollo 13 crew since 1970. The crew also captured more than 7,000 images during the mission, including views of earthrise and earthset, lunar craters, ancient lava flows, and a solar eclipse as seen from the Orion capsule. NASA reported that the crew observed meteoroid impact flashes on the moon's night side.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the astronauts had accepted "significant risk" during the mission while testing the spacecraft and systems intended to carry future crews deeper into space. He described the mission as having "captivated the world" and said it provided confidence to continue the Artemis program.