The Smithsonian Institution is honoring the crew of a private spaceship, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan with the 2005 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for Current Achievement.
The award, established in 1985, recognizes the SpaceShipOne team for launching the first privately developed rocket plane into suborbital space.
Allen, who invested $20 million in SpaceShipOne, plans to donate the spacecraft to the National Air and Space Museum.
Before accepting the award at a private Smithsonian Institute ceremony Wednesday night, Allen presented U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., with a penny flown into space aboard SpaceShipOne.
The rocket plane became the first non-governmental vehicle to reach the boundaries of outer space in June 2004, when it soared to an altitude of 62 miles above the Mojave Civilian Aerospace Test Center.
The successful flight made Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne's pilot, the first U.S. civilian astronaut.
Last October, SpaceShipOne won the international Ansari X Prize after blasting into space twice in five days.
Scaled Composites, Rutan's aerospace company, designed SpaceShipOne.
Allen, founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc., was the sole investor in the program. Vulcan's technology research and development team, which works on science and technology projects for Allen, helped develop and manage the project.
Past National Air and Space Museum Trophies have gone to the teams that handled the Mars Pathfinder, and NASA spacecrafts Magellan and Voyager.
