Former NASA astronauts to receive Congressional Space Medal of Honor | CNN Politics

Vice President Kamala Harris will present the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to two former NASA astronauts in a White House ceremony Tuesday, according to a White House official and NASA

Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken will be awarded for their “for bravery in NASA’s SpaceX Demonstration Mission-2 to the International Space Station in 2020,” NASA said in a news release. The ceremony will mark the first Congressional Space Medal of Honors awarded since 2006. The pair piloted the first crewed launch for SpaceX as part of NASA’s inaugural Commercial Crew Mission to the International Space Station in 2020 – the first astronauts to launch to orbit from the US in nearly a decade.

Hurley, who served in the Marines, and Behnken, who served in the Air Force, were both military test pilots before they joined NASA in 2000. The space agency has a long history of selecting test pilots, who spend hundreds of hours flying around in experimental supersonic aircraft, to be astronauts.

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