Trump Awards the Artemis II Crew a Rare Space Medal

President Donald Trump awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four Artemis II astronauts on Aug. 28 in Houston. The crew had flown around the Moon in April and come home without landing.

The same hour, he ordered a U.S. Space Academy. NASA still dates the first lunar landing to Artemis IV in 2028.

Four Astronauts, One Rare Neck Medal

Trump presented the medals at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. NASA called them the first medal recipients since 2023, when Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken were honored for SpaceX Demo-2.

Artemis II launched April 1 on the Space Launch System rocket and splashed down in the Pacific on April 10. The astronauts were the first to fly NASA’s Orion spacecraft with a crew, and they named the ship Integrity. NASA said they traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any humans before them, and flew 695,081 miles in all.

“We gather on these historic grounds to celebrate the immense courage of four intrepid space heroes whose sense of daring and adventure led them further from Earth than anyone has ever traveled ever before,” Trump said. He added that the crew did not do it alone and saluted NASA’s engineers, scientists, and launch and landing teams.

NASA posted the Houston pictures the same night.

Today at @NASAJohnson, the four crew members of Artemis II received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor from President Donald J. Trump for their historic, record-setting mission around the Moon. https://t.co/9uGYYLxhES pic.twitter.com/SIknQU4lVr

— NASA (@NASA) August 28, 2026

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman stood with the president. “The Artemis II crew answered that call with extraordinary skill and courage, showing the world the Moon again and what American leadership and exploration look like at their best,” Isaacman said. He credited the NASA workforce plus industry and international partners, and he said the agency would build on the flight “as we return to the lunar surface and establish an enduring presence on the Moon.”

NASA Still Has Two Flights Before a Landing

The honors release that recorded the medals also recorded the gap. Artemis II, NASA said, paved the way for a 2027 Artemis III test in low Earth orbit to try rendezvous and docking between Orion and commercial human landing systems, and for an Artemis IV mission in 2028 that “will return American astronauts to the lunar surface.”

THE CREWED ARTEMIS SEQUENCE NASA POSTED WITH THE MEDALS

That sequence is the quiet half of the Houston show. The medals closed a 10-day flyby. The boots-on-the-ground flight is still two missions out, and the next crewed outing is an Earth-orbit docking rehearsal with landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX.

House Science Committee Chairman Brian Babin attended and later described the flight as paving the way for Artemis III. He did not linger on the fact that Artemis III, in NASA’s own write-up, is no longer a landing. Official posts from the day sold a finished triumph. They left the 2028 date sitting in the agency paper.

Why This Honor Used to Be So Rare

Congress authorized the medal in 1969. The statute that created the space medal lets the president award it, in the name of Congress, to an astronaut who has distinguished himself or herself by “exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the Nation and of humankind.” NASA’s history office notes that the president acts on recommendations from the NASA administrator, which in this case meant Isaacman.

There now are 34 recipients, NASA said, counting the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia crews who received the award after they died. On NASA’s full list of medal recipients, 17 names carry the posthumous mark. The first six medals were given on Oct. 1, 1978, by President Jimmy Carter, with Neil Armstrong among them. John Young received one in 1981 after commanding the first space shuttle flight. Jim Lovell received one in 1995 after Apollo 13. Hurley and Behnken in 2023 were the first living honorees since Robert Crippen in 2006.

A successful test flight has been enough before. Demo-2 sent two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on a SpaceX capsule and opened a crew path that kept flying. Artemis II tested Orion and SLS with people aboard and still leaves the landing on a later stack, with commercial landers that have not yet docked with Orion in orbit.

A Canadian Now Stands on the U.S. List

Hansen is the first living non-American on that NASA roster. The only earlier foreign name is Ilan Ramon, the Israeli payload specialist killed on Columbia, honored in 2004. Federal rules allow the medal to go to any person designated to travel in space who has distinguished himself or herself in work tied to a flight. The law does not require U.S. citizenship.

Hansen treated the award as a partnership marker, not a personal trophy.

It is a privilege to receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor alongside my Artemis II crewmates. I share this recognition with the dedicated teams in Canada, the United States, and our international partners who made the mission possible. Artemis II showed what we can accomplish for humanity when we set ambitious goals and work together. For Canada, the mission and the Artemis program as a whole are about much more than just going back to the Moon. It is about the pursuit of excellence and collaboration.

Jeremy Hansen, CSA astronaut, NASA honors release

Canada put a crewmember on the first human lunar trip in more than 50 years and now has a U.S. Congressional medal to show for it. The glory still ran through a Houston stage, a U.S. president, and a NASA administrator’s recommendation.

The Same Hour Produced a Space Academy

After the medals, Trump signed an order creating a presidential commission to design the United States Space Academy, a proposed NASA-led federal school. The NASA administrator chairs it. NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson is the executive director. The order gives the commission 120 days to send the president a report on how such a school would work.

NASA said the academy is meant to strengthen the space workforce and train the next generation of space leaders, and that space is a domain for national security, economic growth, science, and technology. The White House text describes a school that would mix technical education with leadership training and public service, and would prepare a corps “to advance American interests within the space domain.”

WHAT THE COMMISSION MUST PUT IN ITS REPORT

• Governance: How the academy would be run, including the option of placing it inside NASA.
• Curriculum: Academic and leadership courses, plus who may apply.
• Service terms: What graduates would owe after they leave.
• Location: A process for picking a permanent site, which has not been named.
• Law and rollout: What Congress would need to pass, plus a plan to put the school in place.

The academy does not yet have a campus, a class, or an appropriation. The order assigns NASA the cost of publishing it and tells the administrator, after the president approves, to carry out the recommendations that survive that review and any new law. Houston gave Isaacman a second public job on the same afternoon he helped honor an SLS and Orion crew: design the school that is supposed to staff the flights still on the calendar.

Integrity’s 252,756-Mile Mark

The numbers on the medal citation are flight-test numbers. On April 6, six days after launch, the crew passed the Apollo 13 mark of 248,655 miles from Earth at 12:56 p.m. CDT, NASA said. At its farthest point Integrity reached about 252,756 miles. Closest approach to the Moon was about 4,067 miles above the surface.

Hansen spoke from the cabin when they broke the old record.

From the cabin of Integrity here, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration. We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear. But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.

Jeremy Hansen, aboard Orion, NASA distance release

NASA expected a 40-minute communications blackout while the Moon blocked the Deep Space Network. The crew proposed names for two craters, one for Integrity and one for Carroll, Wiseman’s late wife, with formal submissions to go later to the International Astronomical Union. Splashdown came about 8:07 p.m. EDT on April 10 off San Diego. Recovery teams flew the four astronauts to the USS John P. Murtha for medical checks, then on to Houston.

THE 10 DAYS THAT THE MEDALS CLOSED

1. April 1, 2026: SLS launches Orion from Kennedy Space Center with Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen aboard.
2. April 6, 2026: The crew passes the Apollo 13 distance record, flies about 4,067 miles above the Moon, and reaches about 252,756 miles from Earth.
3. April 10, 2026: Integrity splashes down in the Pacific, ending a 695,081-mile trip.
4. August 28, 2026: Trump awards the four medals in Houston and signs the Space Academy order.

Four months sat between the carrier deck and the neck ribbons. That lag is long enough for NASA to write the flyby into the record and short enough for the White House to treat it as a live political asset.

The Crew Split Credit With the Shops

Wiseman called the flight the honor of his lifetime and said having Trump at Johnson Space Center “underscores the significance of what our teams accomplished.” He also pointed forward: “I can’t wait to see my friends continue this legacy on Artemis III.” Glover, who piloted Orion, said the recognition was shared with “the thousands of people who launched us around the Moon and brought us safely back to Earth.” Koch said the crew accepted the award “to honor those who made it happen, from factory floors to clean rooms and mission control rooms.”

After the medals, the astronauts presented Trump with a blue flight jacket carrying mission patches. The jacket was a souvenir from a test that NASA has now dressed in the same honor once given to Armstrong, to the dead of two shuttles, and to the two men who opened commercial crew. The school Trump ordered that afternoon still has to be designed, funded, and built. The landing NASA described in the same paper is still a 2028 flight with a commercial lander that has not yet docked with Orion.

The commission’s report is due within 120 days of the Aug. 28 order. Until that paper lands, the medals are the finished object Houston can hold, and the academy is a name on a presidential directive.