President Donald Trump met yesterday in the Oval Office of the White House with the four astronauts of the Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight around the Moon in over 50 years, in a meeting that quickly turned into a press conference on topics unrelated to the space achievement.
The crew consisted of Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch —all three from NASA— and Canadian Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency. Also present was the NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman.
Trump opened the event with praise for the astronauts, but quickly shifted the focus to himself: "To get in there, you have to be very smart, you have to do a lot of things physically well. So I wouldn’t have had any problems achieving it; I’m physically very, very good. Maybe a small problem. We'll have to try it."
The statement was striking because, minutes earlier, the president himself had said the opposite: “I don’t know how they do it. I wouldn’t want to do it, but we need people like that to make our country great.”
The astronauts stood behind the president for the approximately 22 minutes that the event lasted, maintaining neutral expressions and without Trump or the journalists asking them questions about their experiences. Their families were also present in the Oval Office.
On the Resolute desk, there was a golden replica of the Moon, a gift from Isaacman, and a model of the Space Reactor-1 Freedom rocket on loan from NASA.
The mission Artemis II launched on April 1 from the Kennedy Space Center and concluded on April 10 with a perfect splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of San Diego, after ten days of mission. The Orion capsule, named "Integrity," was recovered by the USS John P. Murtha.
On April 6, the crew set the record for maximum distance traveled by humans from Earth: 252,756 miles (406,771 km), surpassing the historic record of Apollo 13 from 1970, which was 248,655 miles. The achievement was officially recognized by Guinness World Records.
Trump had congratulated the crew on Truth Social on April 11, describing the journey as "spectacular" and the landing as "perfect," and inviting them to the White House. The reaction of Trump to the landing included the message: "We'll do it again, and then, the next step: Mars!"
Isaacman confirmed at the event plans to launch Artemis III in 2027 and execute a lunar landing in 2028, and announced that NASA's headquarters will remain in Washington D.C.
The press conference shifted to other topics: Trump celebrated a Supreme Court decision that narrowed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was passed by a vote of six to three.
"I love it, this is very good. We can end this press conference right now," said the president. He also reported that negotiations with Iran are ongoing, but no longer in person: "We do it over the phone, and it's very pleasant."
The meeting took place in a paradoxical context: the Trump administration has proposed cutting NASA's budget by 23% for fiscal year 2027, with a 46% reduction for space science programs, which would eliminate more than 53 active scientific missions.
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