Trump Hosts Four Astronauts After Artemis II Record Flight
Donald Trump hosted four astronaut crew members of the Artemis II lunar flyby mission in the Oval Office on Wednesday, turning a White House event into a celebration of a flight that set a new distance record from Earth. The astronauts had reached 252,756 miles, or 406,771 km, earlier this month, and their capsule, Integrity, splashed down off the coast of San Diego on 10 April after a 10-day lunar odyssey.
Trump told the crew, “We’re very proud of these people. They have unbelievable courage, unbelievable a lot of other things too.” He also joked about joining the mission himself, saying, “To get in there, you have to be very smart, have to do a lot of things physically good. So I would have had no trouble making it, I’m physically very, very good. Maybe a little bit of a problem. We’ll have to try it.”
Artemis II crew at the White House
The four astronauts were commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. They joined Trump for a celebratory meeting and press conference at the White House, putting the crew of a mission described as historic into a setting usually reserved for diplomacy and policy fights.
The mission’s distance mark overtook Apollo 13’s record of 248,655 miles set in 1970. That comparison gave the White House appearance a built-in benchmark: Artemis II was not just another flight, but one that moved beyond a figure tied to an earlier chapter of U.S. lunar history.
NASA budget cuts and applause
The celebration came after Trump announced his intention earlier this month to slash NASA’s budget by 23 percent, including a 46 percent cut for space science initiatives. That puts the administration’s public praise of the crew alongside a proposed funding reduction that would affect the agency’s lunar and science work.
Trump had already congratulated NASA on Truth Social after the mission, writing that he was proud of the “great and very talented” crew. Wednesday’s Oval Office event carried that praise into a more formal setting, with the astronauts standing beside a president who has also pushed for steep reductions in the same agency he was applauding.
Trump, Iran and Ukraine
The press conference did not stay on space for long. Trump also fielded questions on Iran and Ukraine, saying, “We’re not flying any more, with 18-hour flights every time we want to see a piece of paper.” When asked whether the war on Iran or Ukraine would end first, Trump said, “I think Ukraine, militarily, they’re defeated,” placing unrelated foreign policy disputes beside the astronaut reception.
The next step is political rather than technical: the NASA budget fight is now the issue to watch, while the Artemis II crew’s flight stands as the latest milestone used to frame that argument in Washington.
