Trump Hosts Artemis 2 Crew in Oval Office After Record Flight
Donald Trump hosted the artemis 2 crew in the Oval Office on Wednesday, bringing four astronauts who set a distance record for a crewed lunar flyby into the center of a White House press conference. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen joined Trump after their mission reached 252,756 miles from Earth earlier this month.
Trump opened with praise for the four astronauts, saying, “We’re very proud of these people. They have unbelievable courage, unbelievable a lot of other things too.” He then shifted to himself, saying, “I would have had no trouble making it, I’m physically very, very good.”
White House Praise After Splashdown
The meeting came after the Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on 10 April after a 10-day lunar odyssey. The crew surpassed Apollo 13’s 1970 record of 248,655 miles, reaching 252,756 miles, or 406,771 kilometers, from Earth.
Trump had already congratulated NASA on Truth Social after the mission. The White House appearance gave the four astronauts a public celebration at the end of a flight that was presented as historic before they walked into the Oval Office.
NASA Budget Cut and Oval Office Shift
The celebratory atmosphere sat alongside a separate fact that will shape NASA’s next budget fight: Trump has announced his intention to slash NASA’s budget by 23%, including a 46% cut for space science initiatives. That puts the agency’s most visible human-spaceflight success in the same political frame as a proposed reduction in space spending.
The press conference then moved away from Artemis II and into other issues, including the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, talks with Iran now being handled telephonically, and Trump’s response to a question about whether the war on Iran or Ukraine would end first. Trump said, “We can end this news conference right now. I want to read it.”
For the Artemis II astronauts, the White House moment closes one chapter and opens another: the mission has already set its record, and the public record around it is now tied to a president who praised the crew while also putting NASA’s budget under pressure.
