HOUSTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump is awarding the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Friday to the four astronauts behind the historic Artemis II mission, which sent humans around the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
Trump will present the medals to NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, during a ceremony at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The crew completed its 10-day Orion test flight on April 10, becoming the first people to travel beyond the Moon since the Apollo era. The astronauts also ventured farther from Earth than any humans before them, NASA said.
Artemis II marked the first crewed flight of NASA’s Orion spacecraft and was a major step toward the agency’s plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface and eventually send them to Mars.
Glover became the first Black person to travel around the Moon, Koch became the first woman and Hansen became the first Canadian to make the journey.
The Congressional Space Medal of Honor recognizes astronauts whose actions made exceptional contributions to the nation’s space program. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman joined Trump and the crew at the ceremony.
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