Trump Awards Artemis II Crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, Announces New U.S. Space Academy

Four astronauts got the highest honor America hands out for spaceflight on Friday. President Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, at a ceremony in Houston's Johnson Space Center, according to NASA and multiple outlets covering the event.

The crew earned it. In April, they flew NASA's Orion capsule around the moon on the Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System rocket and the first time humans have gone that deep into space since Apollo. According to NASA, the crew traveled 252,756 miles from Earth at their farthest point, breaking the human spaceflight distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. They covered 695,081 miles total over roughly ten days, launching April 1 and splashing down in the Pacific on April 10.

They came within 4,067 miles of the lunar surface during an April 6 flyby, NASA said. Fox News reported the crew snapped over 7,000 images along the way, including earthrise, earthset, a solar eclipse from Orion, and meteoroid impact flashes on the moon's far side. They named their capsule Integrity.

This is not a small club. According to NASA, there are now 34 recipients of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor since Congress created it in 1969. Neil Armstrong was among the first six recipients, honored in 1978 under President Carter, along with Alan Shepard and John Glenn. The last recipients before Friday were Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, honored by President Biden for the 2020 SpaceX test flight that restored American crew launches from U.S. soil, per The Independent and PBS.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who attended the ceremony, said the mission showed "what American leadership and exploration look like at their best," crediting the broader NASA workforce and industry partners, not just the four astronauts on stage.

The Space Academy announcement

Trump used the ceremony to announce something bigger than a medal ceremony: a new U.S. Space Academy. He signed an executive order creating a Presidential Commission on the U.S. Space Academy, tasking it with designing a NASA-led federal academy to train astronauts, engineers, operators and "warfighters," according to Michael Kratsios, the White House's science and technology policy director, who posted the details on X.

Trump compared the planned academy to West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, telling the crowd, "I said I'll do it, but it's got to be top line, it's got to be the equivalent of the others," according to Newsweek. He said he'd pick a location soon but didn't name one Friday, adding that lawmakers in the room, including Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Brian Babin, had lobbied him for it, per Courthouse News Service.

Newsweek reported the executive order actually gives the new commission 120 days just to deliver recommendations on the academy's structure, mission and site-selection process. Congress may need to act before anything gets built. Candidate locations getting floated include Houston, Colorado Springs, Cape Canaveral and Huntsville, all places with existing space infrastructure, but none of that is decided.

This is an executive order standing up a study commission, not a school with a campus and a budget. Bureaucratic ambition is easy to announce at a ceremony. Delivering "the equivalent" of West Point at a chosen site, with congressional funding and legislative sign-off if needed, is the actual test. Nothing about the order guarantees the timeline Trump implied.

What Trump said beyond the medals

Courthouse News Service noted Trump's speech ranged well past the astronauts themselves. He touted his creation of the Space Force, referenced the Space Force's role in the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro, and contrasted his NASA funding with his predecessors, saying he moved the agency from "the dark ages" to a "golden age." He also said he'd like something on the moon eventually named after himself, per Courthouse News.

He praised each astronaut individually. He noted the crew named a lunar crater after Wiseman's late wife, Carroll. He highlighted Glover's prayer when Orion lost contact with mission control behind the moon, and Koch's message to young people: "Do what scares you." Hansen, Trump noted, is the first non-American to travel beyond low-Earth orbit.

Trump also said Americans will land back on the moon before his term ends, with Mars travel coming "very shortly," according to The Independent and PBS. NASA's own timeline, laid out in its statement on the ceremony, is more measured. The Artemis III test flight is planned for 2027 to practice docking in low Earth orbit, with the actual Artemis IV lunar landing near the south pole targeted for 2028. Whether that schedule holds depends on SLS, Orion and the commercial lunar lander systems all performing on time, none of which is guaranteed given the program's history of delays.

What remains to be seen is what the Presidential Commission recommends in the next four months, whether Congress funds it, and whether "Space Academy" ends up being a real campus or another initiative that stalls in the planning stage.