Artemis II Astronauts Visit the White House

President Trump welcomed the Artemis II crew to the White House today. During a press conference, he praised the three Americans and one Canadian who flew around the Moon earlier this month for the first time since 1972. Asked if he thinks Americans will land on the Moon during his term in office, Trump rated it as a “good shot,” but “we’ll see.”

Trump congratulated the crew for their “unbelievable” courage and for captivating the world’s attention: “I wouldn’t want to do it, but it takes people like this to make our country great.”  NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen stood behind him along with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

“We have some people that captivated the attention of the whole world.” 🇺🇸🚀

President Trump welcomes the astronauts of the Artemis II mission to the Oval Office. pic.twitter.com/twXKtvp30c

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 29, 2026

“Everybody I knew wanted to see the launch and they especially wanted to see a successful landing,” Trump said, then joked with Isaacman about whether presidents are allowed to go on space missions. The exchange was clearly in jest and Isaacman replied “we can get working on this.”

A reporter who said he’d had the opportunity to interview Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon (who passed away in 2017), inquired whether landing astronauts on the Moon before Trump leaves office is realistic. The President replied “we have a good shot,” while making clear it’s not a certainty.

“Well, we have a shot at it. I mean, we don’t like to say definitely, because then you say, oh, we failed, we failed. I think we could say we’re ahead of schedule. So we have a good shot. We’ve authorized it and I think with this team and with Jared, he’s done such an amazing job at NASA, I think we have a good shot. Right? We’ll see.” — President Trump

Isaacman offered that “we have an achievable plan” and will launch Artemis III in 2027 and “protect for two opportunities in 2028 to return astronauts to the surface.”

Isaacman just reconfigured the Artemis program, with Artemis III now an earth-orbital test flight instead of the first post-Apollo landing. Artemis IV will now be the first landing since the Apollo era, planned for 2028, and he hopes a second lunar landing that year might be achievable. He’s also increasing the number of robotic flights to the Moon starting next year to begin building a lunar base.

The press conference quickly veered to other topics, but at the end another reporter asked if NASA headquarters would be moving from Washington, D.C. to one of NASA’s field centers elsewhere in the country. Rumors were rampant in the first half of last year that HQ might move to Kennedy Space Center or Johnson Space Center as part of the DOGE efforts to reduce the size of government.

Isaacman, at least, isn’t thinking in those terms. He replied that NASA has “10 amazing Centers” around the country that contribute to NASA’s mission and being in D.C. “gives us the opportunity to interact [with] all our stakeholders to make sure we make the right decisions for the nation.”

Coincidentally, the House Appropriations Committee released its draft FY2027 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill this morning, which funds NASA. The bill rejects the Trump Administration’s proposed 23 percent cut to NASA, which protects the human spaceflight program, but scales back everything else at the agency.