Former NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken will be awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for bravery in NASA’s SpaceX Demonstration Mission-2 (Demo-2) to the International Space Station in 2020.

(NASA via AP)CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The first astronauts launched by SpaceX declared victory Monday in NASAs cosmic capture-the-flag game. The flag flew on the first space shuttle flight in 1981 and the final one in 2011. The flag was an added incentive for Elon Musk's SpaceX company and Boeing, competing to be the first private company to launch a crew to the space station. Saturdays liftoff of NASA astronauts was the first from the U.S. in nine years. The crew will include Chris Ferguson, commander of the last shuttle flight who now works for Boeing.

The two astronauts will fly on a SpaceX test flight to the International Space Station. Once on board the space station, Hurley said the capsule, newly named Endeavour after the retired shuttle, handled extremely well. He was the pilot on the last U.S. spaceship to visit the space station the last shuttle flight, by Atlantis, in July 2011. Until Saturday, SpaceX had launched only space station supplies or satellites. Even so, getting the two astronauts safely to orbit and then the space station had everyone breathing huge sighs of relief.