Artemis II astronauts receive nation's highest space honor for their successful moonshot

The Artemis II astronauts who flew around the moon in April received the US’s highest space honor on Friday.Donald Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the three Americans and one Canadian whose lunar flyby for the US space agency Nasa set a new distance record for humanity.Nasa’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, and other dignitaries took part in the packed ceremony at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, home to mission control. The president used the occasion to announce the creation of a US space academy for the nation’s space force as well as Nasa and the commercial space community.“Space is the hot thing,” Trump told the crowd, adding that the academy’s location has yet to be determined.Cmdr Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian, became the first astronauts to travel to the moon in more than half a century, coming within 4,067 miles (6,545km) while test-driving Nasa’s new Orion capsule. They were the first to launch onboard Nasa’s new moon rocket, a 30-story behemoth that had soared only once before from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.While they didn’t stop at the moon, the four set the stage for next year’s Artemis III docking rehearsal in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV’s moon landing by two astronauts, near the lunar south pole, could follow as soon as 2028.Trump said Americans will land back on the moon before his second presidency ends. Mars is next – “very shortly”, he said.The president called the newest recipients “four intrepid space heroes”. He pointed out that they did not do it alone, thanking all who contributed to the Artemis II mission.“There are no finer humans we could have sent as our ambassadors to the stars,” Isaacman added.Wiseman and his crew are in good company, with only 30 astronauts receiving the prestigious honor before them. Many of the recipients were honored posthumously following their spaceflight-related deaths.Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong – whose phrase “that’s one step for man, one giant leap for mankind” gripped the world when he became the first person to walk on the moon on 20 July 1969 – was the first to receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.President Jimmy Carter awarded six of these medals in 1978, which also went to Alan Shepard, the first American in space; John Glenn, the first American in orbit; and Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman, whose 1968 mission marked humanity’s first lunar voyage.The most recent recipients were Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, the first astronauts to launch aboard a SpaceX rocket. Coming nine years after the space shuttle program’s close, their 2020 test flight to the International Space Station restored the US’s ability to launch crews from home soil. Joe Biden awarded them the medals in 2023, during the third year of his presidency.Dozens of astronauts participated in the ceremony, including Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, who is now 91 – and the four men assigned to Nasa’s upcoming Artemis III mission.Schmitt noted that his mission – Apollo’s last moonshot – was the most productive lunar exploration yet.“Soon to be surpassed by Artemis,” he said of active astronauts standing behind him.Nasa plans a sustainable moon base staffed by astronauts and robots near the lunar south pole, where permanently shadowed craters are thought to hold tons of frozen water that could be turned into rocket fuel and drinking water. China is eyeing the same region.“The second space race has begun,” Nasa’s deputy administrator, Matthew Anderson, said.As the two-hour ceremony came to a close, the Artemis II astronauts presented Trump with his own blue flight jacket complete with space patches, which they had promised him while visiting him in the Oval Office after their mission.The president then hustled over to mission control to call the three US astronauts onboard the International Space Station. He informed them of the new US space academy, then briefly handed the phone to two of their spouses for a quick hello.