US President Donald J. Trump has awarded elonmusk the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, recognizing his achievements in engineering and space exploration while calling him a “national treasure.”
Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, received the medal on Thursday, October 8, 2026, at the Science: A New Golden Age summit in Washington, DC. The White House cited his contributions to space exploration, intelligent systems, communications and American manufacturing.
Trump highlighted SpaceX’s reusable rockets, its Starship program and Starlink, the satellite network delivering internet access worldwide. Starship is being developed for repeated launches and future missions beyond Earth orbit, while SpaceX’s reusable launch systems have helped expand commercial spaceflight.
“We’re proud of you, very proud of you, national treasure,” Trump told Musk,
also describing him as “our modern day Thomas Edison.”
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su also received the National Medal of Science for their contributions to information retrieval, computing architecture and semiconductor engineering. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell received the separate National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
The ceremony also held a personal connection for Trump. His uncle, MIT electrical engineering professor John G. Trump, was a 1983 National Medal of Science recipient. White House science adviser Michael Kratsios presented the president with his late uncle’s medal in a frame during the event.
Musk’s recognition coincided with another major SpaceX achievement. Hours before the ceremony, NASA‘s Crew-12 mission safely returned four crew members from the International Space Station, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles on October 8 after 237 days in orbit.
Trump congratulated SpaceX on the successful return during his speech, as the company completed another crewed mission for NASA on the same day its founder received the national honor.
