WASHINGTON, D.C. — For the first time in almost 17 years, two astronauts on Tuesday received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor at the White House for their work as the test pilots who completed the first NASA commercial crew mission with SpaceX.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who chairs the National Space Council, presented the medals to former NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken. In May 2020, Hurley and Behnken became the first people to launch into orbit from the United States in almost nine years, completing NASA’s inaugural commercial flight to the International Space Station, known as Demo-2.
When they launched from Florida’s coast, Hurley and Behnken helped write “the first page of a new chapter in the history of American spaceflight,” Harris said Tuesday.
“Millions of Americans watched that day,” the vice president recounted. “For the first time in almost a decade, we witnessed American astronauts launch an American rocket from American soil.”
NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley, left, and Robert Behnken on their way to Pad 39-A, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, May 30, 2020. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
It was the SpaceX Dragon 2 capsule’s first trip into orbit with a crew, marking what was seen as a new phase of public-private partnership on human spaceflight.
Since then, through NASA’s commercial crew program, five missions have launched to the International Space Station carrying 13 American and seven international astronauts.
The Space Medal of Honor was created in Congress in 1969 to recognize any astronaut who has “distinguished himself or herself by exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the nation and mankind.”
Hurley and Behnken are just the 29th and 30th people to receive the honor. Seventeen people were awarded the medal after their deaths, including the crews of Apollo 1, Space Shuttle Challenger and Space Shuttle Columbia.
Both of Tuesday’s honorees logged decades of service with the U.S. military and NASA: Hurley had previously served as a fighter pilot and a test pilot in the Marine Corps, and he was behind the controls on the final mission of the American Space Shuttle program in 2011. Behnken, a test pilot with the Air Force, helped assemble the International Space Station and completed ten space walks.
“Bob and Doug represent the best of our nation,” Harris said.
Space is one of the core issues of the vice president’s portfolio. She most recently met with both Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and French President Emmanual Macron to discuss space cooperation, agreeing to partner on issues like national security and commercial space flight.
On Tuesday, the vice president looked ahead to the major goals of the U.S. space program in the coming years: to return Americans to the moon, go to Mars and to fly more private citizens into space.
In Texas last fall, Harris also hosted the second National Space Council meeting at the Johnson Space Center. On that trip, she also spoke by video call with astronauts aboard the International Space Station, including the members of NASA’s Crew-4 mission, another one made possible through public-private partnership.
French President Emmanuel Macron, left, and Vice President Kamala Harris speak during a meeting to highlight space cooperation between the two countries, at NASA headquarters in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
