TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS — The Artemis II astronauts may have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth to the moon, but they made sure the rest of us didn't miss out on the adventure.
Now, their efforts to bring the wonders of space exploration back down to Earth have earned them one of science communication's most prestigious honors: the Stephen Hawking Medal.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, accepted the award on Saturday (Oct. 17), during the opening ceremony of the Starmus VIII festival. The honor recognizes all four crew members, including NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who wasn't in attendance.
For Wiseman, the experience of seeing our home planet from the vicinity of the moon carried a powerful message.
"If we could take each of you 250,000 miles away from this planet, 400,000 kilometers away from planet Earth, and you would see Earth the size of your thumb. It's tiny," Wiseman told the audience.
"When you're there looking through the moon, back at this tiny Earth, the only thing you feel is love, peace, hope, unity", he continued. "Those aren't the right words, but that is all you feel."
During their historic Artemis II mission, the astronauts did far more than put NASA's Orion spacecraft through its paces. Through live communications, interviews and glimpses into life aboard the spacecraft, not to mention the jaw-dropping photos that just keep on coming, they helped turn an extraordinarily complex mission into something people worldwide could experience and connect with.
And that's exactly what the Stephen Hawking Medal is designed to celebrate.
Established in 2016 by physicist Stephen Hawking and Starmus, the award honors those who have gone above and beyond to make science accessible, engaging and inspiring.
The Artemis II crew joins some pretty impressive company. Previous recipients include Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, naturalist David Attenborough, primatologist Jane Goodall and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
This year's ceremony marks the medal's 10th anniversary, with filmmaker Ridley Scott also among the 2026 honourees.
"It's a special thrill for us at Starmus to be able to honor the intrepid Artemis II crew members in the same way that we honored the Apollo astronauts who paved the way to the moon over 50 years ago," Starmus co-founder and Queen guitarist Brian May said in a statement ahead of the ceremony.
Wiseman left the audience with one final thought.
"When you come home to this beautiful planet, you realise that it's in every single one of us to choose to make tomorrow better," he said. "So let's all choose to make tomorrow better".
Starmus VIII runs from Oct. 17-22 across Tenerife and La Palma in the Canary Islands. This year's festival, themed "The Search for Truth", brings together leading scientists, astronauts, musicians and artists to celebrate scientific discovery and explore the importance of evidence and scientific thinking.
