Artemis II crew awarded Congressional Space Medal of Honor

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Friday, the United States’ highest accolade for spaceflight achievement. The ceremony was conducted by former President Donald Trump, who presented the medals to the four crew members of NASA’s Artemis II mission after they completed a lunar flyby in April that set a new distance record for humanity, surpassing the milestones of the Apollo era.

The Artemis II flight, the first crewed mission to travel beyond low‑Earth orbit since 1972, carried the astronauts on a trajectory that took them around the Moon and back to Earth, covering more than 400,000 kilometers. The record‑setting distance underscores the mission’s role in advancing NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface and eventually enable crewed missions to Mars. The Congressional Space Medal of Honor recognizes the crew’s historic contribution to space exploration and their embodiment of the program’s objectives.