White House
President Donald Trump is expected to be in Houston next week to award Congressional Space Medals of Honor to each of the crew members of the Artemis II mission, NASA announced on Friday.
Trump, who spoke to the crew while they were in space on their historic lunar fly-by mission and hosted them in the Oval Office after their return to Earth, will award the medal in a ceremony at the Johnson Space Center on Aug. 28 at 10 a.m.
The Congressional Space Medal of Honor is a dedicated honor awarded to astronauts by the U.S. President. The medal has been awarded to astronauts since 1978, and has since gone to the likes of Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and posthumously to the crews of Challenger and Columbia.
Trump is also expected to take part in a Republican National Committee fundraiser in Houston the night before. Though details of the fundraiser have been sparse, MS NOW reports the event has the goal of raising money for Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General in the midst of a closely-watched Senate campaign.
“It’s an event that is designed purely to raise money for both Trump and Republicans,” Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said on Houston Matters on Wednesday. “He’ll be back here in Texas in the middle of September, up in Dallas, for the unique mid-fall [Republican National Midterm] Convention.”
Representatives from the national, state, and Harris County chapters of the GOP did not return a request for comment on the details of the convention.
