Zoom in / NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken (foreground) work on Crew Dragon touchscreens.
NASA
On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris will award the Congressional Medal of Honor for House to Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken. Former NASA astronauts launch on the primary flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft in Could 2020.
Hurley, the spacecraft’s commander, and Pilot Behnken will obtain the “Braveness” medal displayed throughout the Demo 2 mission to the Worldwide House Station. Their first mission was a whole success, and since that groundbreaking flight, NASA has flown 5 operational missions aboard the Crew Dragon, together with two personal spaceflights.
The Dragon crew offered NASA with its solely technique of entry to the area station aside from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft – saving the area company the embarrassment of getting to depend on Russia for that switch amid heightened tensions surrounding the warfare in Ukraine.
Outdoors of area circles, the House Medal is not a very well-known honor, particularly as a result of it hasn’t been awarded in almost twenty years. Nonetheless, the medal is prestigious and sometimes solely awarded to astronauts who’ve died throughout spaceflight actions.
Over the course of greater than 4 many years, solely 28 astronauts have ever been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Of those, 17 have been posthumously handed over to the crews of the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia accidents.
The US Congress licensed the President to award the medal “to any astronaut who has distinguished himself within the efficiency of his duties by exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the nation and of mankind.”
President Carter awarded first prizes to Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, and Pete Conrad; Gemini Gus Grissom; and Alan Shepard and John Glenn of Mercury in 1978. When not awarded posthumously, it has gone to pioneers, resembling Shannon Lucid, who made a long-duration spaceflight on the Mir area station, or the astronauts who first flew on new automobiles, resembling John Younger and Robert Crippen aboard the area shuttle.
Inside the subsequent two years, further astronauts will pilot new spacecraft and should turn out to be eligible for the medal.
Later this spring, as quickly as April, Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams will launch the primary crew aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the area station. Then, presumably in late 2024 or early 2025, 4 astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft will fly across the moon. The 4 crew members for the Artemis II mission, anticipated to incorporate a Canadian astronaut, are prone to be named someday this spring.
