NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will each receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on August 28, one of the highest honors associated with American human spaceflight, following their historic Artemis II mission around the Moon.

What they accomplished

The crew launched April 1 aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center, becoming the first astronauts to fly Orion and the first humans to travel beyond the Moon in more than 50 years. Over their 10-day mission, they flew a combined 695,081 miles, a distance that surpassed the previous record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970. Hansen became the first non-US astronaut ever to fly to the Moon. The mission concluded with a splashdown off the coast of San Diego on April 10.

NASA''s official broadcast of the Artemis II crew''s return to Earth.
The Orion spacecraft descending under three orange-and-white parachutes toward the ocean
Orion splashed down off the coast of San Diego on April 10 after its 10-day journey around the Moon.

The ceremony

President Trump is scheduled to present the medals at 11 a.m. EDT on August 28 during a ceremony at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman also expected to attend. The medal recognizes astronauts whose achievements have made an exceptional contribution to the nation's space program, and the ceremony will be streamed live on NASA's website.

The Artemis II flight was a crewed test of the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket, laying groundwork for Artemis III, which is intended to land astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo program.