— The first astronauts to fly by the moon in more than 50 years could receive an honor previously only bestowed to the first crew to land there, if a former space shuttle commander's legislation is passed by Congress.

Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a retired NASA astronaut, and Representative Don Bacon (R-NE-02) co-introduced the Artemis II Congressional Gold Medal Act on Wednesday (June 24) to recognize the four crew members. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Jeremy Hansen with the Canadian Space Agency, traveled farther away from Earth than anyone in history while on a mission to fly by the moon's far side in April.

"Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy carried human space exploration farther than it has ever gone before," said Kelly in a statement. "I've flown on four missions to space and I know how hard that crew and the teams on the ground worked. They made something incredibly complex and difficult look easy."

"They reminded Americans what we're capable of when we work together. They inspired the next generation of scientists, explorers and engineers. For pushing the boundaries of human achievement, the Artemis II crew deserves this honor," said Kelly.

Cosponsors of the bill include Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Deb Fischer (R-NE) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) and Representatives George Whitesides (D-CA-27), Gabe Evans (R-CO-08) and Glenn Ivey (D-MD-04).

"The Artemis II Congressional Gold Medal Act is a bipartisan, bicameral effort to honor this historic mission with the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow," said Bacon. "I am grateful to our friends at Space for Humanity for bringing this idea to us, and to Sen. Kelly and our co-leads for working together to recognize these extraordinary astronauts."

Space for Humanity is a non-profit organization that is working to expand access to space by organizing civilian astronaut flights.

The Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom are the highest civilian honors awarded in the United States. Congress uses the medal to recognize individuals and groups whose achievements have had a lasting impact on American history and national life.

The Artemis II Congressional Gold Medal will depict the four-astronaut crew, as directed by the act. The bill also authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell bronze duplicates of the Artemis II medal in bronze at a price sufficient to cover the cost of their production.

The first and to date only astronauts to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal were John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth on his Mercury spacecraft "Friendship 7," and Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in 2011.

Other gold medal recipients who have made contributions to space exploration include rocket pioneer Robert Goddard in 1959 and NASA's "hidden figures" Christine Darden, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan (as well as a medal dedicated to all of the women who worked as mathematicians and engineers at NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) and NASA between the 1930s and 1970s.

In addition to their distance record ("252,756 miles, or 406,771 kilometers, from Earth"), the Artemis II Congressional Gold Medal Act honors the crew members for delivering "the first ever real-time, high-definition lunar images taken from human worn digital devices" and making "the first ship-to-ship voice call between a lunar mission and the International Space Station, representing milestone inter-orbital communication."

The act also details each of the crew members' individual accomplishments, including "the first person of color, and the first Black astronaut" (Glover), "the first woman" (Koch) and "the first Canadian, and the first astronaut from outside the United States, to travel beyond low Earth orbit and around the moon" (Hansen).

"Artemis II marked a bold new chapter in American space exploration, with a groundbreaking crew that set records," said Whitesides, who previously was chief of staff at NASA and then CEO of the suborbital spaceflight company Virgin Galactic. "Their incredible accomplishments represent the very best of us and brought the country together in a collective moment of awe."