Four astronauts just received the United States' highest space honor.
President Donald Trump gave the astronauts of NASA's Artemis II moon mission the Congressional Space Medal of Honor today (Aug. 28) during a ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"This is a very rare thing. It's for courageous people, brilliant people, bestowed on astronauts who have distinguished themselves with exceptional service to the nation and all of mankind," Trump said during the event.
Artemis II launched on April 1 and came back to Earth nine days later. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a long-term base near the moon's south pole in the coming years.
The flight sent four people — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — on a looping journey around the lunar far side. It was the first crewed trip beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and its astronauts got farther from their home planet than any people ever had before.
Artemis II engaged folks around the world thanks to its importance, its historic nature and the charisma of its astronauts. And some fortuitous orbital dynamics didn't hurt, either: The Artemis II crew were lucky enough to observe a total solar eclipse from beyond the moon, something human eyes had never seen firsthand before.
The Congressional Space Medal of Honor is awarded "to any astronaut who in the performance of his duties has distinguished himself by exceptionalIy meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the Nation and of mankind," NASA wrote in a description of the award, citing Congress' stated criteria.
Though the president gives out the medal, he does so on the recommendation of the NASA administrator, the agency added. Before today, just 30 people had received the award, and most of them are pretty big names. Past honorees include Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong; Alan Shepard and John Glenn, who were the first Americans to reach space and orbit Earth, respectively; Gemini astronaut Ed White, the first American to perform a spacewalk; and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell.
The award was also given to each of the 14 astronauts who died in the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters.
Hansen therefore wasn't the first non-American to receive the medal. Ilan Ramon, one of the seven people who perished when Columbia broke apart upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, was from Israel.