Artemis II Crew to Receive Congressional Space Medal of Honor
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- Artemis II crew members Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on 28 August at Johnson Space Center in Houston, with only 30 astronauts having earned the honor including Neil Armstrong and John Glenn.
- Donald Trump selected the crew for the medal after NASA administrator Jared Isaacman recommended them to the president, four months after the astronauts visited the White House where the then-80-year-old president told them 'I would have had no trouble making it.'
- The Artemis II mission broke Apollo 13's 1970 distance record at 252,756 miles during a 10-day lunar flyby launching 1 April, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen became the first non-US citizen to fly to the moon.
- NASA faces a proposed 23% budget cut from the Trump administration for fiscal 2027, including a 46% reduction for space science, though a House Republican-led subcommittee advanced a counter-budget preserving the science projects Trump targeted for elimination.
- Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken were the previous medal recipients, accepting the honor in 2023 during Joe Biden's presidency after their 2020 flight on the first commercial crewed spacecraft.
Why it matters: The medal ceremony lands amid an active budget fight: Trump's own administration is pushing to cut NASA by 23% — including a 46% gutting of space science — yet his allies on the House commerce subcommittee have already advanced a counter-proposal protecting the very programs Trump wants eliminated.
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