08/31/2026
BAHEP joined member companies and regional leaders at NASA's Johnson Space Center last Friday as President Donald J. Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the crew of Artemis II: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman joined the President for the ceremony.
This recognition is rare. Congress created the medal in 1969, and fewer than three dozen astronauts have received it, Neil Armstrong and John Glenn among them. Astronauts lost in Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia received it posthumously.
Artemis II earned it. The crew launched April 1 and splashed down on April 10, flying 695,081 miles and breaking the distance record Apollo 13 set in 1970. It was the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft and the first time humans traveled beyond the Moon in more than 50 years. Every mile of it was flown out of Mission Control here in Bay Area Houston.
Our region is critical to human space exploration. NASA supports nearly 40,000 jobs across Texas and roughly $9.3 billion in annual economic output, with 2,948 federal employees and more than 12,000 contractors across the state, with the overwhelming share of it concentrated in our communities. The engineers, flight controllers, suppliers, and small businesses who put Artemis II around the Moon work here, live here, and raise their families here. BAHEP members build the hardware, train the crews, and run the mission.
Thank you to the Artemis II crew for the risk you accepted and the standard you set, and to NASA Johnson Space Center for continuing to lead human spaceflight from Houston. Next stop, the lunar surface!
Go Artemis III!
