President Donald J. Trump awarded NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Aug. 28, 2026, NASA announced the same day. The ceremony was held at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the recipients were the first honored since 2023.

According to the release, the Artemis II mission launched on April 1 and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10. The crew were the first astronauts to launch on the SLS rocket, flying aboard the Orion spacecraft they named Integrity. NASA said the astronauts traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any humans before them, surpassing a record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970, and flew 695,081 miles in total, including a lunar flyby.

The medal was authorized by Congress in 1969 to recognize exceptionally brave and meritorious efforts by astronauts. NASA said there are now 34 recipients since the beginning of the space program, including the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia crews, who received it posthumously. The release described Artemis II as paving the way for a 2027 Artemis III test flight in low Earth orbit and an Artemis IV mission in 2028 intended to return astronauts to the lunar surface.