NASA’s Artemis 2 moon astronauts just got some face time with the president, though they stayed firmly in the background.
President Trump invited the Artemis 2 quartet and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman to the Oval Office today (April 29), for a livestreamed press event that the White House described as a “greeting.”
“It takes people like this to make our country great,” Trump said of NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency‘s Jeremy Hansen. “We’re very proud of these people. They have unbelievable courage.”
The president then mused about the possibility of going to space himself.
“By the way, 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,” Trump said.
He then turned toward Isaacman, who, along with the Artemis 2 astronauts, was standing behind him.
“Maybe a little bit of a problem — I don’t know, Jared,” Trump said. “We’ll have to try it sometime. Is a president allowed to go up in one of these missions?”
“We can get working on that, Mr. President,” Isaacman replied.
Artemis 2 launched on April 1 and returned to Earth on April 10. The mission sent Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen on an epic journey around the moon and back. They were the first people to leave Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, and they got farther from their home planet than anyone ever ever has before, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
Trump didn’t ask the Artemis 2 crew any questions about their experience, and neither did the assembled reporters. In fact, the astronauts didn’t say a word during the 22-minute event, instead standing stolidly over the president’s shoulders.
Isaacman got a bit more attention. For example, Trump personally congratulated the NASA chief and said picking him for the top job was a “great choice.” (He made that choice twice, actually; Trump officially nominated Isaacman in January 2025, pulled his name in May, and then renominated him in November.)
The president also passed along to Isaacman a reporter’s question about potentially moving NASA Headquarters out of Washington, D.C.
“You heard that question with those beautiful ears of yours,” Trump said to Isaacman. “He’s got great hearing, you know — he’s got super hearing.”
“Trick of the trade, sir,” replied Isaacman, who has sportingly acknowledged his larger-than-average ears in the past. He then answered the question.
“We have a lot of people very interested in our mission,” Isaacman said. “So, being here in D.C. gives us the opportunity to kind of interact from all our stakeholders, make sure we make the right decisions for the nation.”
Most of the reporters at today’s event took the opportunity to ask Trump about the war with Iran, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, redistricting efforts in the U.S. and other non-space topics. But the final frontier did come up a couple of times.
For instance, one journalist asked Trump for an update on the declassification of the government’s UFO files — something the president recently pledged to do.
“Well, I think we’re going to be releasing as much as we can in the near future,” Trump said. “I’ve interviewed people — my first term, primarily, but I interviewed some pilots, very solid people — and they said they saw things that you wouldn’t believe. So you’re going to be reading about it.”
Another reporter asked Trump if he thinks NASA has a shot at landing people on the moon before his presidential term ends. (That is indeed the plan; the agency aims to put astronauts down near the lunar south pole on Artemis 4, which is targeted to launch in late 2028.)
“Well, we have a shot at it,” Trump said. “I mean, we don’t like to say ‘definitely,’ because then you’ll say, ‘Oh, we failed, we failed.’ Because we’re — I think we could say we’re ahead of schedule. So, we have a good shot.”
And, on his own, Trump brought up the U.S. Space Force, which he established during his first administration.
“It’s going to turn out to be one of our most important things,” the president said.
He also claimed that the Biden administration tried to kill the Space Force, though that White House pledged its full support for the new military branch just two weeks after taking power in early 2021.
In addition, Trump took credit for raising NASA out of what he described as a regrettable state.
“We got involved with NASA, bringing it back,” he said, then turned to Isaacman. “When I first looked at some of your facilities, they had grass growing on the runways, right in between the cracks of the asphalt. But not anymore. It’s really strong.”
None of the reporters asked about the White House’s 2027 federal budget request, which cuts NASA’s total budget by 23% and its science funding by 47%. Trump proposed similar cuts for the space agency last year, but they were denied by Congress.
