America's new moon heroes: Trump honours NASA’s Artemis II crew, unveils Space Academy, eyes Mars next

The Artemis II astronauts who flew around the moon earlier this year received the nation's highest space honour on Friday, as President Donald Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honour to the four-member crew whose April lunar flyby set a new distance record for humanity, according to a report by AP.

The medals went to the three Americans and one Canadian who flew the mission: commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada's Jeremy Hansen. The four became the first astronauts to travel to the moon in more than half a century, coming within 4,067 miles (6,545 kilometres) of the lunar surface while test-driving NASA's new Orion capsule.

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They were also the first to launch aboard NASA's new moon rocket, a 30-storey vehicle that had flown only once before, from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and other dignitaries took part in the ceremony at Houston's Johnson Space Centre, home to Mission Control. Trump used the occasion to announce the creation of a US Space Academy for the Space Force, NASA and the commercial space community, though the academy's location has yet to be determined. "Space is the hot thing," the president told the crowd.

While the crew did not stop at the moon, their flight set the stage for next year's Artemis III docking rehearsal in orbit around Earth, with Artemis IV's crewed landing near the lunar south pole potentially following as soon as 2028. Trump said Americans would land back on the moon before his term ends, adding that Mars would follow "very shortly."

The president called the astronauts "four intrepid space heroes" and thanked all those who contributed to the Artemis II mission. Isaacman said, "There are no finer humans we could have sent as our ambassadors to the stars."

Wiseman and his crew join a select group, with only 30 astronauts having received the Congressional Space Medal of Honour before them, many posthumously following spaceflight-related deaths. Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, whose words on the Moon on July 20, 1969, became etched in history, was the first recipient of the medal. President Jimmy Carter awarded six such medals in 1978, including to Alan Shepard, the first American in space; John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth; and Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman, whose 1968 mission marked humanity's first lunar voyage.

The most recent recipients before Friday were Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, the first astronauts to launch aboard a SpaceX rocket. Their 2020 test flight to the International Space Station, coming nine years after the space shuttle programme ended, restored America's ability to launch crews from home soil; they were awarded the medals by President Joe Biden in 2023.

Dozens of astronauts attended Friday's ceremony, including Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, now 91, and the four astronauts assigned to NASA's upcoming Artemis III mission. Schmitt noted that his mission, the last of the Apollo programme, had been the most productive lunar exploration yet, adding it would soon be "surpassed by Artemis."

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NASA is planning a sustainable moon base staffed by astronauts and robots near the lunar south pole, where permanently shadowed craters are believed to hold frozen water that could be converted into rocket fuel and drinking water — a region China is also targeting. NASA Deputy Administrator Matthew Anderson said, "The second space race has begun."

As the two-hour ceremony concluded, the Artemis II astronauts presented Trump with a blue flight jacket featuring space patches, fulfilling a promise made during an earlier visit to the Oval Office. Trump then went to Mission Control to call the three US astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station, informing them of the new Space Academy before briefly handing the phone to two of their spouses.

With inputs from AP