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SpaceX’s first NASA astronauts to receive Space Medal of Honor for Dragon test flight

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4 years ago

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NASA says that the astronauts responsible for SpaceX’s first crewed Dragon test flight will be awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for their bravery.

Kamala Harris, the sitting US Vice President and Chair of the National Space Council, will bestow the exceptionally rare awards to former NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken in a ceremony on Tuesday, January 31st. NASA will stream the event live on all social media platforms and its own NASA TV service, beginning around 4:15 pm EST (21:15 UTC).

Since Congress authorized the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1969, it has been awarded just 28 times. Just 11 went to living astronauts, while the other 17 were awarded posthumously: to the three NASA astronauts killed in the 1967 Apollo 1 accident and the 14 astronauts killed in the Space Shuttle’s 1986 Challenger disaster and 2003 Columbia disaster. Former President George W. Bush awarded the most recent medal to Robert L. Crippen, the first Space Shuttle pilot, in 2006.

NASA notes that “despite the medal’s name, the President awards this medal based upon recommendations from the NASA Administrator,” indicating that Administrator Bill Nelson selected Behnken and Hurley for the honor. It’s difficult to imagine a pair of astronauts more worthy of ending the 16-year gap since the last Space Medal of Honor was awarded.

Prior to the Dragon test flight they will be honored for, Behnken and Hurley had storied careers in the US military and at NASA. Bob Behnken earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 1997 and eventually became a lead flight test engineer in the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor program. He was selected as a NASA astronaut candidate in 2000 and flew two Space Shuttle missions in 2008 and 2010. In 2012, Behnken was chosen to lead NASA’s prestigious Astronaut Office, and did so for three years before he began training for the Commercial Crew Program.

Doug Hurley earned a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1988 and received a commission in the US Marine Corps upon graduating. He made three deployments as an F/A-18 pilot and later became a Navy Test Pilot in 1997. Hurley was “the first Marine pilot to fly the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet” and has experience flying more than 25 types of aircraft. He was also selected to become an astronaut in 2000 and flew on two Space Shuttle flights, including the Shuttle’s 135th and final mission in 2011.

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Behnken and Hurley inspect Dragon hardware in 2017. (SpaceX)
Behnken and Hurley were assigned to Dragon Demo-2 in 2018. (NASA)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks to Bob Behnken. (SpaceX)
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, Musk, Behnken, and Hurley inspect Falcon 9 and Dragon. (NASA)
Demo-2 lifts off with Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. (Richard Angle)
Behnken and Hurley arrive at the ISS inside Crew Dragon. (NASA)
Dragon safely returns Behnken and Hurley to Earth. (NASA)
Behnken and Hurley greet cameras after their successful recovery. (NASA)

In 2018, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were assigned to SpaceX’s first crewed Crew Dragon test flight. Leaning on their histories as pilots and engineers, they worked with SpaceX for multiple years before the company’s historic astronaut launch debut. Their input lives on today throughout SpaceX’s Dragon program, from the spacecraft’s design and interior to how the company trains private and public astronauts.

On May 30th, 2020, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first NASA astronauts to lift off from US soil since the Space Shuttle’s 2011 retirement and the first astronauts in history to ride a privately-developed rocket and spacecraft into orbit. Defying expectations, Crew Dragon beat Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the punch and performed (more or less) flawlessly throughout its Demo-2 test flight.

NASA was so confident in SpaceX – and encouraged by Crew Dragon’s initial performance – that Demo-2 was extended from a minimum duration of about a week to 62 days. After two months in orbit, Crew Dragon successfully undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), deorbited, reentered Earth’s atmosphere, deployed parachutes, and gently splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico – safely returning Behnken and Hurley to Earth.

The highly successful test flight allowed NASA to rapidly certify Dragon. Less than four months later, another Crew Dragon spacecraft lifted on a Falcon 9 rocket on SpaceX’s first operational astronaut ferry mission for NASA. More than two years later, Boeing’s Starliner remains uncertified, and Crew Dragon is still the only spacecraft capable of sustaining the presence of NASA astronauts at the ISS. SpaceX is on track to launch its sixth consecutive astronaut ferry mission – Crew-6 – no earlier than February 26th.

The pressure on SpaceX and the importance of Crew Dragon to NASA cannot be overstated. In a nontrivial sense, NASA and SpaceX would not have Crew Dragon’s essential – and currently irreplaceable – capabilities without the work done and risks taken by Behnken and Hurley. Had either astronaut made a significant mistake or faltered during Dragon’s Demo-2 test flight, the state of US human spaceflight could be significantly worse off than it is today. Instead, the astronauts played their parts to perfection and helped catapult SpaceX, NASA, and the world into a new era of commercial human spaceflight.

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley retired from NASA in 2021 and 2022, respectively. They will receive the 29th and 30th Congressional Space Medals of Honor.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

Elon Musk sat beside Trump as AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord.

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24 minutes ago

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September 29, 2026

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Elon Musk had the seat right next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday as the White House hosted the leaders of America’s biggest artificial intelligence companies for a lunch that ended with a voluntary industry accord on AI safety.

A seating chart Trump posted on Truth Social placed Musk at the president’s left in the East Room, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on his right, according to an Associated Press reporter. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also attended, along with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

After the lunch, Trump told reporters outside the West Wing that the executives had signed “The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” Johnson described it as a voluntary statement of principles built on “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review,” while Zuckerberg said company boards would independently review reports from outside auditors. Trump called the document “morally binding,” said he would name a new AI czar within days, and signed an executive order formally renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” CNBC reported.

Musk was not in the room for Tesla alone. Since SpaceX absorbed xAI, he runs the company behind Grok and one of the largest AI training operations anywhere. On September 25, he said another 220,000 Nvidia GB300 chips would come online at Colossus 2 within a week, with more expected in November and December.

SpaceX confirms third massive compute deal at Colossus data center

 

Musk also used the trip to restate his energy ambitions. “SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year,” he said at an event in Washington. It is the same combined target he laid out that feeds directly into Terafab, the Tesla and SpaceX chip venture that will need enormous amounts of power.

The showing between Musk and Trump has come a long way, since the two had the very public split in mid 2025 after Musk opposed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and left DOGE. They reconciled at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that September, and Trump later called their relationship “good”. Since then, Musk has joined Trump’s China delegation in May and attended last week’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

For Tesla, that access to government official could pay dividends. As Teslarati noted in January, federal autonomy rules, NHTSA oversight and a single national standard for driverless vehicles all run through an administration Musk can more easily reach directly as Tesla works to scale Robotaxi and Cybercab beyond Texas.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded

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14 hours ago

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September 29, 2026

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Credit: @BLKMDL3/Twitter

Ahead of its highly anticipated unveiling, Tesla’s upcoming Roadster received a new patent that aims to keep it grounded while enabling white-knuckle speeds.

The patent, which was granted on September 29, is titled “Electric Car Fan,” bluntly stating its design but not its purpose, which is further detailed in the text of the application. Interestingly, it comes two weeks before the Roadster event, which was delayed due to unfavorable weather on Thursday, which could cause issues, as Tesla revealed the event must be held outdoors.

The purpose is to solve a problem that is relatively unique to high-performance electric cars. Instant motor torque is useless if the tires cannot plant that force, and conventional wings and underbody tunnels generate downforce only when air is already rushing past the car. At launch, in slow corners, and under hard braking from modest speed, passive aerodynamic additions contribute essentially very little to downforce.

Tesla’s filing says that its fans can produce the downforce needed, independent of vehicle velocity, then ease off so the same hardware does not pile on drag at highway speeds, an issue that can come from excessive body modifications.

The hardware outlined in the patent is a ducted-fan package that is placed into the rear of the vehicle. An underbody inlet between the rear wheels feeds a duct that rises to a wide outlet in the diffuser. In that outlet are four axial fans, which are divided by vertical strakes. They will pull air from under the floor and press the chassis onto the pavement.

The language in the patent claims it can cut drag rather than add to it while simultaneously increasing downforce.

Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges

The fans run from the high-voltage battery and a vehicle control system, so output can be modulated rather than left on as a fixed penalty.

There are additional strengths that can come from this design, like extra tire load at low speed, which can contribute to even more face-melting acceleration rates, decrease stopping distance, and sharper turn-in before a wing has air to work with. Adjustable fan speed lets the car add grip only when needed, so it can be catered to the force of a turn or acceleration.

These designs were previously used, and banned, in some competitive settings. The Brabham BT46B was banned in F1 competition for using a similar fan design and being labeled as too effective.

Tesla still lists the Roadster as having a sub-two-second 0-60 MPH time and a 250-plus-MPH top speed, and there are expectations for a SpaceX cold-gas thruster package that could not only increase acceleration but potentially cause the vehicle to hover.

It is important to note that a patent is not a production part, and packaging four fans in a rear diffuser, managing noise, and potential debris are all things Tesla must consider. With that being said, the patent being granted shows Tesla is designing the Roadster to go fast, but it is also attempting to use unique strategies to combat any issues it might have at those speeds.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong

Published

15 hours ago

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September 29, 2026

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Credit: @thaichiminh1907/X

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) showrooms have been picked clean ahead of the end of the third quarter of the year, as demand looks to be strong and delivery estimates for new vehicles are pushed into late 2026 and early 2027.

Tesla appears to have sold out of many of its Model 3 and Model Y trim levels in the United States, as only the Model Y RWD and Model Y All-Wheel-Drive are available for delivery before the end of the year.

Additionally, many showrooms are either completely empty or void of all but just one demo unit within the buildings themselves in an effort to bolster what could be one of Tesla’s best quarters in vehicle deliveries in recent memory.

Additionally, when I spoke to the guys at Tesla Mechanicsburg two weeks ago, when I returned the Model Y L, their third hauler of the week had just arrived, and every vehicle on it, along with every vehicle in their delivery lot, was accounted for and had a name attached to it for delivery.

Tesla saw a 25 percent increase in deliveries in Q2 compared to the same quarter the year before. The vast majority of the 480,126 units it delivered, 467,762 vehicles to be exact, were the Model 3 and Model Y.

In Q3 2025, Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles, once again a figure that was dominated by the company’s two mass-market vehicles. Analysts have unusually wide predictions for this quarter, likely because so many firms missed the Q2 delivery figure by such a substantial margin; Wall Street predicted 408,000 cars, while Tesla delivered 480,000.

Goldman Sachs has Tesla slotted for 435,000 deliveries in Q3, while JPMorgan said it anticipates 482,000. The median guess is about 449,000 deliveries for Q3.

Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.

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