Trump Awards Artemis II Crew Congressional Space Medal of Honor
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- Donald Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to Cmdr. Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen (a Canadian) at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday.
- The Artemis II crew came within 4,067 miles (6,545 km) of the moon in April while test-driving NASA's Orion capsule aboard the new 30-story moon rocket, setting a new human distance record.
- Only 30 astronauts had received the medal before them; Neil Armstrong was the first recipient, honored alongside Alan Shepard, John Glenn and Frank Borman in a 1978 ceremony by President Jimmy Carter.
- The most recent prior recipients were Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, awarded by President Joe Biden in 2023 for the 2020 SpaceX Demo-2 flight that restored US crew launch capability.
- Trump used the ceremony to announce a new US space academy for the Space Force, NASA and the commercial space sector, with its location still undetermined.
- NASA's deputy administrator Matthew Anderson declared "The second space race has begun," noting China is eyeing the same lunar south pole region — site of a planned sustainable moon base where frozen water could be converted to rocket fuel.
- Artemis III is set for a docking rehearsal next year, with an Artemis IV landing of two astronauts near the lunar south pole targeted as soon as 2028; the four Artemis III crew members attended the ceremony alongside Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, now 91.
Why it matters: The medal is largely symbolic, but Trump's announcement of a dedicated US space academy and NASA's explicit "second space race" framing signal a coordinated push to assert American leadership at the lunar south pole — a region China is also targeting — with a concrete Artemis IV landing deadline as early as 2028 anchoring the timeline.
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