Coverage Of Deorbit Burn & Splashdown Of SpaceX/Crew Dragon Spacecraft | TIME

so far this morning you may have seen us on the previous webcast last night this morning it's hard to tell what

time

of day it is right now but you saw the

dragon

complete with a series of

burn

s there was a series of exit

burn

s away from the Station International Space Agency that completed that

dragon

, allowing the

spacecraft

to move further and further away from the station in a series of choreographed maneuvers, it all went very smoothly and as we said now we're just waiting for the trunk separation and after that having a pretty exciting

deorbit

and

splashdown

so we look forward to all of that yeah yeah at this point the Dragon

spacecraft

is well below the international space station and then quite a few miles ahead at this point and that's just to make sure that once the trunk is separated, it's not basically in the same orbital plane as the international space station, so that will be the next major milestone to be It's coming up and then the

deorbit

burn which will go through all those

time

s in just a little bit but it's going to be about a 15 minute shot through those thrusters on Dragon and that will basically take it out of orbit so it will fire these thrusters until it that trajectory basically points it right back into the ocean in the Atlantic, where we're landing a human-built spacecraft for the first time in 50 years, so this is going to be a very exciting morning, and like I said, we're going to bring you some great views.

The sun has already gone down on the East Coast, so we're in for quite a splash during the day, as someone who's seen this specific vehicle built in the last two years is pretty awesome as well, as I mentioned earlier in today's webcast, to see the astronauts. on board the International Space Station floating in and out of the capsule as they opened the hatch and that was very exciting and then leaving Byrnes earlier he saw the footage of the station like a dragon I was leaving it was just amazing we had some amazing shots and we've seen the artist renderings for a couple of years, what it would look like when the dragon was on the station and finally seeing that it was a wonderful moment in terms of us who have spent so many hours on this spaceship, almost It didn't look real, yeah, when they actually saw it fly, but I mean, since it's part of that that happened early in the day of the cruise aboard the space station, so they Since they went through a bunch of other tests, they actually woke up about an hour before the dragon fruit undocked.

They are operating on Greenwich Mean Time, so it was early morning for them, but they offered up some great words like the dragon undocking and it flew once it was outside the approach ellipsoid, about a kilometer from the Station. Space Station and as Kate said, he ran all of his exit burns that ran for exit burns after that initial separation basically taking him in front and then around and finally under the International Space Station where he is now in its orbit waiting this trunk separation and eventually the deorbital burn yeah so in terms of SpaceX history this demo mission is incredibly important as it's like I said the demo of our

crew

program interestingly enough the spacecraft Dragon hanging behind me here at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California is similarly the same mission d e demo of our cargo program that we've been running for NASA for the last two years in terms of the cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station, so who knows if the demo1 capsule will also be hanging behind us here in Hawthorne.

I don't think we have the structural support for that, but in terms of what you see behind me, it's similar in terms of historical references for the importance of today's mission and that pod actually already has another mission on the books for it. SpaceX plans to use it in their abort ascent test coming a little bit later this year, which will be between demo one that we're about to wrap up today and demo two, which will be the first flight where we actually have our astronauts on board. that the spacecraft Bob Bankin and Doug Hurley, the two NASA astronauts, will be the first to take the dragon into space on the asset on board.

It will be a great test. Yeah, I wouldn't want to get involved in things that are a lot of g-forces. but it will be very important for us to be able to demonstrate the ability of the capsule to exit the vehicle in case of urgent need, so we are all looking forward to that test flight, as it is also something that we have been working on for the last few years and yes , that should come up in a couple of months here yeah and that's going to be the second of four that they've done because they already did a test paddleboarding mm-hmm with a dragon spaceship so basically just putting the vehicle through all the steps all these different major missions like this right now all ultimately with the goal of sending humans to the International Space Station otta Crew Dragon yeah something else really interesting about today's mission and actually the program Commercial Crew in the future. in terms of the X-space approach to landing the pods, we're landing them in the Atlantic as we mentioned earlier, whereas the commercial, excuse me, the cargo resupply mission, the Dragon pod had pods that landed in the Pacific, so today is really exciting, we're very excited to bring you footage of our recovery team as we pull the dragon out of the Atlantic Ocean.

Today there are many novelties. There have been many, many have been news throughout the week and to say that the adrenaline has been pumping. here's an understatement, yeah I even want to say we even had a crowd this morning behind us gathered at the checkpoint and there's more now yeah yeah now I would. Okay, it's 4:30 in the morning here on the west coast, but the crowds are already starting to gather here at SpaceX headquarters, but an interesting note, yes, normally those cargo dragons land in the Pacific and, Although this vehicle is ultimately designed for

crew

, it's also carrying some cargo, it took about 400 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station and it's been packed with a little over 300 pounds for the trip home and that's working in a couple of different areas one of the most interesting and one that NASA is really interested in is bringing back what we call utilization so some scientific samples actually have two bags they're basically like refrigerators to board that are packed in these cold bricks that were able to put scientific samples, so those that are coming home today using some of the human research projects aboard the E International Space Station is that we like to say that the astronauts are experiments themselves that he's poking around and pushing while they were there just to see how the human body changes and reacts in microgravity and a lot of the samples from a couple of those projects will make it to home at dragon today they're also bringing home a couple of radiation monitors and one thing that our program manager kirk sharman from the space station program pointed out that it will also have a fan pump spacer and that's actually a piece, it's a piece of space suits, e/m use of extra vehicular mobility units, i'm from NASA, too many acronyms. and it's a piece that actually failed in orbit some time ago and they're bringing it home for a look.

It was replaced with a spare unit and we have some space markings in March so we are very busy in the space. right now, but right now we're all focused on seeing this dragon come home, so the next milestone we have in about seven minutes is trunk separation, we'll take a break for a few minutes and while we're waiting for that, like this stay tuned and Well see you in a pair oh so right now we're expecting to hear that trunk split again expecting to get that call just on the internal Nets anytime now that's going to be the next major milestone then or beyond a deorbital burn exactly so we should get that call any minute while we await trunk separation.

This is the last thing the dragon has to do before it can re-enter Earth's atmosphere and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean. That's right, yes, the trunk no. going home but the rest of the Dragon pod the most important part will be going home the other things the dragons are going to do before the final reentry is closing the nose cone and we'll get to a bit of that soon but basically that. the nose cone will protect the top of the Dragon spacecraft, the docking adapter, and also the guidance of the navigation and control sensors, so that's one of the last major milestones, that's another type of dragon deflection of charge The nose cone is jettisoned during launch during the launch phase, but with Crew Dragon keeping the nose going all the way through, it aids in the actual reuse of Crew Dragon for future missions now that the trunk section is gone pressurized and we can use it to carry cargo on the way to the International Space Station, but everything that comes back from the station is put in the pressurized section, so we can throw away that trunk as it's not needed anymore and we can get rid of that weight extra and I think we just heard the trunk separation so hopefully they can bring you a visual here shortly not really we are too far from the station on right now so yeah next up will be the spaceship that will use some front thrusters to run. the deorbit burn this is going to be a really important step because once the deorbit burn happens you will come back home you will like to get hit you will leave orbit you will go back to earth that is going to put the dragon on a trajectory for that return, the burn will last about 15 minutes once it starts so we're going to keep waiting this is like the calm before the storm please we're just waiting for things to really kick in the move dragon is going to do that very soon deorbit burn and then it only takes about 45 minutes or so until it's out on the water in the Atlantic and ready to be picked up by the crews on the boats so once again We'll continue to wait we'll bring you these updates as we they get there, but one more milestone down, just a few more to go and then the dragons head back home, so again right now, we're just ready for this deorbit burn. to get started, we expect it to start in about a minute and then, it will take a little over 15 minutes to complete. what the dragon needed to do before it could go back to ad entered Earth's atmosphere and as we said that's going to be a burn for about 15 minutes and then we'll have a parachute deployment and

splashdown

after that so like said Dan, the calm before the storm we'll have a lot of activity will show up once we get through the reentry burn, but at this point we should get confirmation of the deorbit burn in a couple of seconds, that's right, and once for the deorbit burn to be complete it's just trying to do some quick math in my head while I look at everything but it's only about 40 minutes or so until the dragon is scheduled to return to the water so it's a pretty fast travel from being in outer space to being back in the ocean and we just heard a confirmation of the burn in orbit so like we said this will last about 15 minutes so the burn or burn has come Since at this point the dragon has started to re-enter Earth's atmosphere, it's going to get a little toasty, but we're excited to do it. to happen as is the next step the next milestone on your journey home is right and again the final destination in the Atlantic Ocean and there are ships waiting we will go through all the recovery forces and everything in place but there is a main recovery ship that it's for searching and that's going to have all the recovery teams from SpaceX that are responsible to go out and pick up the capsule from the water which is a seeker view which was actually a camera view of one of the other ships that are in the area that's going sailor that also has the combined NASA team on board so once we have crew on board they'll all be on one ship so it's going to be a little tighter space but obviously you'll have the SpaceX people to go and recover the capsule and then the NASA people usually also bring the flight documents and nurses anyone who has seen a landing and a Soyuz in Kazakhstan is familiar with that a hen the crew come home after about six months Nth period, it's important that we give them a quick medical, just take vitals, make sure they're okay, and help drive as they re-adjust or theirgravity for the first time and it knows up to six months or more for everyone to be on a boat but for today we have two boats so we'll get some hopefully additional views from those different cameras as we watch the dragon descend but for now we're on that deorbit, so we've got a couple more minutes until that. it's complete and then we're one step closer to the dragon coming back yeah so while the dragon is entering Earth's atmosphere we'll pause for a few minutes until the orbit burn is complete so make sure stay and we'll see you in a few minutes and right now we're in the middle of the deorbit burn and we were expecting it to last about 15 minutes and 20 seconds the visiting vehicle officer in Houston was briefing the station flight director again that we Before About halfway down we continue to get a couple views from the boats and again those are cameras that will follow the dragon once it falls under those parachutes and we're also starting to see that it looks like this is a view from a WB plane 57 so you have a number of assets off the coast of Florida again there are two ships or two ships both with onboard tracking cameras and NASA also flies their WB 57 aircraft which is generally used for high altitude weather research and other science missions but it does have a camera attached to it and hopefully it should give us some views of the dragon dropping under those parachutes so on your screen you see a beautiful go searcher shot , which is our main recovery ship there at the front of the ship, you can see what would essentially be the crew quarters during the standby, they could be at sea depending on how rough the waves are for a couple of weeks , just a couple of days depending on the fire or splashdown point for them to be coming into the The view on the right hand side of the screen at the top is actually the helipad for the helicopters to land if we need to get the astronauts to the coast faster than just having them travel on the boat and that's really something I love about this boat. underneath that heliport are actually medical accommodations so we can have the astronauts checked right after they get out of the capsule and we can see them there and give them a warm welcome that they're not on the ground yet obviously but that's how it is . amazing vehicle in there that we can keep that much going once while waiting for the astronauts to land and then obviously once they're on board also important to note that right now the crews are around 200 or so give or take nautical miles offshore, that won't be the case when we bring crew members back to that much closer landing zone.

I think it's typically 20-24 nautical miles from port, so that gives them the ability to get back in in just a couple of hours instead of the little over a day that it looks like it's going to take teams to bring back. to Dragon after this mission but there we have some views of Dragon as it's re-entering atmosphere it's pretty dark in space yeah we're still in the middle of that deorbit burn we expect it to take a few five more minutes so it's pretty unique that the spaceship is used while the deorbit burn is still going on again this is just the final maneuver the final shot of those Draco thrusters just to get the dragon out of orbit and set it up on a trajectory to finally splash down there in the Atlantic, where, as you were seeing, the recovery crews are standing ready and waiting to receive and again this long deorbit plan: it lasts about 15 minutes os and 20 seconds and this is just to finally get the dragon out of its circular orbit so at this point it has been in a circle. orbital just below the space stations orbit and call it olympic orbit KO for the last few hours in this deorbit burn is going to radically change that orbit of the plant by basically preparing it to intersect with the earth down there in the water where the teams recovery ships are waiting now that we have a full view of the recovery ship on the right hand side of your screen you can see a part of the ship that we couldn't see before and that is actually the part of the ship where once the Dragon pod is close enough that vertical piece you see there will lift it out of the water it will actually act on the water and lift the Dragon capsule out of the ocean and then bring it back to the boat and place it in its nest so cool this is a new new technology we've installed on this ship specifically for our crew dragon missions so it's like we said before this is a mission of d demonstration and while a recovery t The team has been practicing for recovery operations.

This is obviously the first time they'll be practicing with a vehicle coming from space, so we're very excited to bring you live

coverage

as this all unfolds over the next hour or so. yes, and to give you a timeline of that recovery period, it is expected to take a little less than an hour for the team to have to get back to the ship, which in a situation where there is crew on board is about that hour for get the crew out of the water and on the boat so they can do all their initial medical checks and everything else that we normally do after the crew members come back from these long duration missions the waves look pretty calm even though they seem really Good conditions out there in the Atlantic again it's a little over 200 nautical miles off the coast of Florida and they will eventually make it back to Port Canaveral where the spacecraft will be returned and delivered. see the SpaceX teams, they're where they're going to start processing and preparing to turn around for that assigned abort, yes we've been monitoring recovery weather conditions for the last few days and now that recovery day is over. has come down to us we can see we have beautiful skies and actually in my unprofessional nautical knowledge relatively calm seas to my eyes but you know it's really hard to be able to predict what the weather will be like at sea well in advance so that we are all very happy to be able to have clear pictures of the recovery team as we move forward here.

I feel like we've been lucky with the Florida weather so far on this mission, okay, we're here. and there's about a minute left in this deorbit burn so I'm pretty much done with it and again this is just the final maneuver to start taking the dragon out of space and into the ocean. We're still getting a couple of views from aboard the Dragon spacecraft. that This is what you're seeing, okay, now we'll just wait and listen to what the deorbit burn went like. It should end momentarily, so as Dan said, we are awaiting confirmation of the completion of the deorbit burn that has been occurring. for the last few minutes and as we said before Dragan left the Space Station earlier today, he did a series of exit burns and now we hope that we're just coming off the final burner which is the reentry burn and there on the left side from your screen you can look at our recovery ship waiting for the dragon splashdown once we get out of this once we get out of the reentry burn we will have parachute deployment the first of these will be the drag slides the smaller slides that reduce the vehicle speed followed by main parachute deployment and that will slow it down further allowing it to get to a slower speed as it gets closer to the ocean surface and we're told it was a nominal burn so the deorbit burn is complete the dragon is on its way home so the next thing that will happen is the nose cone on Dragon will close and we hear the process is now in place and then it's time for Dragon to actually go through Earth's atmosphere and ultimately splashdown so that's where the vehicle is going to get tremendously hot because again you have to take into account that the dragon is traveling thousands of miles per hour right now and when it hits the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere it will heat up tremendously from the friction and this is actually a video of the nose cone starting to close in the Dragon spacecraft and again that nose cone just closes off to protect the top of the vehicle from all re-entry events, not just re-entry through Earth's atmosphere but also once it's in the water and that protects the guidance, navigation and control sensors on top of the dragon and also that docking ring it uses to connect to the space station so again what?

What you're seeing now is that the nose cone is closing on the Dragon spacecraft as we wait for it to re-enter Earth's atmosphere, so it looks like the nose cone is almost closed. We'll wait for a final confirmation that everything looks good with it but pretty soon we'll be looking towards the actual input interface so that's again where the dragon starts hitting the atmosphere enough to start heating up because right now it's high enough even after the deorbit burn that you still aren't feeling those effects the atmosphere will thicken as you start to descend and that will heat up the vehicle.

That's why you always have this heat shield on the bottom of these spacecraft and that's why a lot of Marin is this conical shape has a lot of it. The engineers I've talked to like to say that physics hasn't changed since the 1960s when we built the spacecraft back then that was why it was formed for a reason and that's why it's so common to see this c The capsule design just because of the way you re-enter Earth's atmosphere has a lot of sense so we just heard confirmation that the nose cone hooks have started the process of securing the nose cone in place before the bird re-enters that's correct so in There is actually an early time that you lose signal with the spacecraft and that's only because when you re-enter Earth's atmosphere and go through that intense heat, the plasma actually collects on the outside of the spacecraft. and I can't is to send or receive signals from there, so it's very common when there are people on board, you lose voice communication between them and the ground and you lose all telemetry or data streams coming from the spacecraft to rooms like the Mission Control Center right behind us. in Hawthorne, so it will either come close or expect it to happen around five.

What time is 5:30 to 3:00 a.m. If we're able to get through that phase of the mission, as we said before, it'll be parachute deployment and then splashdown, so just a quick recap in case you've joined us recently, we've departed from the International Space Station. . The dragon completed a series of burns for departure, a slowly choreographed maneuver, and now we've jettisoned the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft, completed the exit burn, and are now beginning to head back through Earth's atmosphere and space. end the dragon leg on the way home and we'll be ready to wait until we get through that input interface and that'll be about 20 minutes from now and then once I'm there it's time for the parachutes and we talk about the parachutes a while ago and we hope we can see those parachutes maybe from the plane, but once it's below the cloud shelf we should be able to see them from the boats which will.

I'll be out there after the recoveries and it comes in two different stages and you take us through the chutes very quickly yeah so with the chutes we'll have the drag chutes those are the smaller chutes that will come out and slow the vehicle. go down a bit and then we'll have the main parachutes which are clearly visible because of the orange and white color on them very iconic if you've seen the previous Dragon Splashdown the cargo resupply missions so we'll have that and then that's what will slow the vehicle down enough to have a safe dip in the water so at this point another fun fact about Dragon and returning to land the seats inside the pod at this point have been activated or are have become the reentry position, depending on which phase. from the mission that we're on in the seats will actually act or adjust the angle to make sure that the g-force that the astronauts will experience is in the right places, so with that it's your help, we'll take a short break from operations you're active here at SpaceX so with that being said we'll be taking a short break, be sure to stay connected with us as we get through this early blackout period with the Dragon capsule we'll be back on. only a few when we returned in anticipation of that parachute deploymentare left and if you're just joining us we've had a successful deorbit so that was the last major milestone oh we've also confirmed that the nose cone is closed. all the hooks are hooked, so now we're just waiting for Dragon to start tearing through Earth's atmosphere.

The deorbit burn lasted a little over 15 minutes and was reported to have been done successfully with no issues and Dragon is now on its way. back home they continue to get great views from the boats in the splash zone and we'll also be keeping an eye out for any video possibly of an aircraft we have in the area one of NASA's WB 57 research aircraft is I'll try to get some views of Dragon and the deployment of the parachute and actually going down below the parachutes there are some clouds in the area so the ships may not see you right away but once you're below those cloud covers they'll have something nice Great views of how it goes down so on your screen again you can see our main recovery ship which is what happened but that is our recovery ship which is fully equipped with medical rooms for check ups once we have crew on board of the dragon for our next missions. they will be able to get out of the pod and get a full medical checkup right after.

There is also a helipad there where a helicopter can land in case we need to get them back to court sooner than the boat may be. able to Coe and there on your screen you can see I mentioned earlier that the elevator that will lift the dragon out of the water has triggered it to its recovery position so you can see on the right hand side or f your screen at the end of the boat and that's what it will actually remove the dragon from the water, pick it up and then place it in its nest, which was the official term for it on the ship, and then that would be considered the end, at least whenever we get to that point, that would be the end of our webcast today but at this point we're still waiting for the parachutes to deploy and then the whole recovery operation which as I mentioned before the recovery team has practiced this but obviously not with a craft that's come down from the space station international still a lot. of scoops that we're going to see today and we're so excited to be able to share that with you, yeah, and if you missed the beginning, the fun history tip we have for today is that it's been almost 50 years to the day since we needed a designed spacecraft landed. for humans in the Atlantic Ocean, the last one was Apollo nine and that was on March 13, 1969, actually it was supposed to land in the Pacific, but it ended up pointing to the Atlantic and that was the last time they landed one in that area, so it will be exciting to see this water bring back all of our crew members for the last two years basically since we stopped flying the space shuttle they have come down to land on earth in cosmic sound in the russian soyuz spacecraft and in a not too distant future we will have crew members doug doug hurley and bob behnken still awake they will be on the dragon now for the demo2 mission a little later this year so everything is looking really good so far we're going to keep waiting for that front end we're about 20 minutes away from what we expect to see a dragon under those parachutes so not long for good stuff to come there's a lot of anticipation. there's a crowd growing behind me here at 26 headquarters our Mission Control Center is right down there and you can probably hear the voices within and in the room around us and the crowd is definitely starting to grow in anticipation of the resistance plugins respawn so with that being said we'll be taking a short break while we wait for Dragon to re-enter and for those parachute drops that stick around we'll be back in a few so we're getting a little treat here. you're getting a live view inside the Dragon capsule, again you're getting closer and closer to that input interface that goes through Earth's atmosphere and then plunges into the Atlantic Ocean, but first we have a very special guest, someone who will be aboard a dragon in the not too distant future NASA astronaut Bob Bankin Bob thanks for being here thanks for taking a couple of minutes I know you are following along with the teams there is a lot of excitement how are you feeling about the mission until now?

I think I said this earlier when we were here for the promotion phase and docking very excited you know of course this is the precursor to our mission coming up here and so when it's successfully completed we'll be one step clo be to our flight, that's awesome, so what's in store for you between now and that flight? What kind of preparations do you have left to do? That's a great question. We have a significant amount of training that we need to go through, so we'll walk. through all the various phases and flight so we'll do the pre-launch we'll get into the suits we'll do it here and I'll do a Hawthorn on the buck we'll do a tour at the Kennedy Space Center actually on the launch pad learn a little bit more about the emergency escape system if we need it before we go into space so we'll walk through all those different scenarios and then we'll come back here for a couple of other events associated with docking and of course he said that we're getting views inside the Dragon spacecraft and I mean the cameras are fine but it can't do justice to reality.

What's it like to be on a spaceship when you're coming back and everything is heating up? there's a couple of pieces back through the atmosphere before the first one is really emotional for those of us who have seen a lot of spacecraft come back it's very special to go through that experience and it's a physical thing as well as seeing the light from the atmosphere as the outer parts of the spacecraft heat up you see some orange lights flickering in the plasma and you go past the windows the windows will be down near our feet in this vehicle which will be our closest view out the window per se But it's definitely something that we'll be able to see and get to know the exterior of vehicles that go through something pretty serious and hopefully he'll take care of us as it leads to injury, that's unbelievable, I can't. even imagine what that experience is like again, there's the physical part, you can use stations that come with the light, but there's also the thrill of knowing that you're taking all that energy that you put into the vehicle to get it into orbit, that's all I have to do. get back outside so you can get back to earth safely so it's been a while since you've been in space is there anything you're really looking forward to when you get to the space station something like what's your bucket list once Get back up, you know for me, when I get back to the International Space Station, I really want to see it fully completed, I got pretty close with my flights, we put the dome on the bottom of the space station, one of the things. near complete construction on the International Space Station, so I'm looking forward to getting back there and experiencing sunrises and sunsets again, they're just remarkable from orbit, not quite the same as they are from the ground. that instead another last question for you I'm sure you've been following social media you've seen the pictures of our 0g indicator now he won't be back until you bring it back to us so he has a little bit of time to play and with it while you're at the station, is there anything you'd like to show a little down to earth while you're at the station with him? yes, that's a good question.

I didn't actually realize little earth day was going to stay on board this alert is while eros on one of europe yeah here at SpaceX they come in lettuce when we sat down to watch the undocking said hey we're going to need your comments so i think our plan is for you to show us that you are going to probably welcome us on board when we get there and i think anand dabit and oleg have trained you well so i hope you can walk us through the emergency report and be a full member of the station crew by the time we get there it definitely looks like you've been getting a crash course and just about everything you should have it all and you should be able to transfer it to us that's part of being a member of the station crew arriving and assuming responsibilities on the International Space Station, that's great, well, we certainly hope they return, as do you and Doug, in our Mission e demo n a couple of months so be very exciting we'll be back to the reentry interface bob we'll let you watch because again interest in that thanks a bunch of jumping up the stairs for a quick and talk thanks again thanks a lot so we're awaiting our deployment to be the final phase of the reentry of the Dragon spacecraft as it is returning through Earth's atmosphere.

I'm still a bit stunned by your comments on what it's really like to come hurtling through Earth's atmosphere, something you see depicted in movies and TV shows of course, but hearing it live from the source is pretty cool. and that's exactly what dragon and ripley are doing right now so we brought you a live view of that just a couple of minutes ago it was pretty cool that we could get bat shots like we said the plasma will build up in the exterior of the vehicle as it re-enters the atmosphere so there is a blackout period which we are in but we expected and that's where we are at the moment but we can't give you a view of Ripley on her return trip to the Atlantic Ocean . see a view of our recovery ship there as i said before we can now see that the lift arms have activated in the recovery position and are thus in anticipation of Dragon being pushed to a position closer to the end of the ship and get lifted to the recovery nest and you have to imagine the teams in the ocean are ready for this to come home as they have about two hundred nautical miles out to sea they actually left yesterday so they've been in the water for some time so ready and waiting again the prime team is underway and that's a bunch of techies from SpaceX that will be responsible for going out on some fast ships that will deploy from that lead ship and th basically start stabilizing the pod and then they're going to get the two of them up close until they get them up on the ship and also make sure they get those parachutes as they get rid of the pod and pretty much just at the time of the a landing, so we're going to be ready to see how that all plays out very soon, we should see those parachutes in about 10 or 11 minutes from now, right after the dragon begins its final descent into Earth's atmosphere, so we're getting a lot closer things will really pick up once we get the first ones to use a dragon over the Atlantic they're absolutely as Dan just said we have about 10 minutes until we see the first deployment which is the deployments of the drogue parachute so with that being said we're going to take a short break and be back in a few minutes as we get closer to parachute deployment so this is a view from that WB 57 plane you were looking at the dragon going full speed ahead sky speed in its reentre through Earth's atmosphere with the goal of a splashdown shortly, so it's very exciting that we get the image right now, since it's our first Rare view from planet Earth of the Dragon capsule since it took off from Cape Canaveral just a few days ago.

I will say this is quite a rare tree to be able to see this here and again this video is from a NASA aircraft we are flying around that recovery zone there WB 57 is commonly used for a lot of atmospheric studies and other science missions , but able to put a tracking camera on it to try to get this reentry through Earth's atmosphere today. We hear they should have a bear takeover. Signal acquisition with the Dragon spacecraft at this time. It's about 46 kilometers altitude yes so just for orientation purposes if you've seen our launches before you might be familiar with the tilt of this as a take off reminder this is re-entry the plane is below Dragon spaceship. t and the camera is looking up as it gets closer to the spacecraft, so based on the orientation of the images it looks like the dragon is going up when in fact it's still going down towards Earth and again just keep it on the timeline so we actually acquired the signal about a minute earlier than expected where we'll look for those initial floating parachute deployments about 41 minutes past the hour so after Dragon goes down a little more, we'll stick around.

Keep an eye out, you'll see the drop parachutes deploy initially, followed by those four main parachutes that are much larger and capable of slowing the vehicle down for a much smoother ditching in theocean. Minutes now I just heard that we are now below 30 kilometers and if you are just now tuning in this is dragon this is dragon coming home this is from a camera on board a chase plane there at the landing zone over the Atl about 200 nautical miles off the coast of Florida we're less than 30 kilometers and continuing to descend the next milestone we're going to look for is parachute deployment and Aaron was now about 20 kilometers and altitude the Dragon spacecraft continues to descend. now it's subsonic so it's already starting to slow down thanks to the bug breaking basically crashing into eris's atmosphere it causes a lot of friction and allows the vehicle to finally reach its terminal velocity basically and then those parachutes will activate to let those parachutes do it. the initial deceleration and then they will finally pull out the four main parachutes responsible for actually slowing the spacecraft down before that flicker you can hear at SpaceX headquarters as the employees who have gathered around our Mission Control Center are Sharing the same view as you, which takes a quarter of Dragon coming back down, err, further slowing the dragon vehicle all the way.

The Atlantic Ocean really couldn't ask for a more perfect shot than Matt, yes, all four shots now unfolded, it will continue to descend, continue to slow down, and eventually plunge into the Atlantic fair that we are now less than a mile away from. altitude only about 750 meters to go in case if you're joining us you can see on the screen the dragon re-entering there, I just re-entered Earth's atmosphere after departing from the International Space Station, we have a beautiful photo of healthy parachutes deploy and slow the vehicle down as it approaches the surface of the atlantic ocean off the florida coast and continues to descend under those shoots we just passed 500 meters everything still looking good through reports to all flight control teams we are now at about 400 meters and only after 300 meters continuing to descend, we could be just in time as we planned to splash down around 5:45 a.m.

Pacific and we are getting very close to that bingo time just passed 200 meters and we have confirmation that the dragon is now below 100 meters as 100 meters above the gate the ocean surface below , it turns waiting for the splashdown and there we have the confirmation of and you can see on this screen that there are codes that are too fast running towards the capsule now in recovery that splashdown arrived just in time 5:45 a. m. Pacific 8:00 35 AM m. in the east the teams that have been ready and waiting were Steve's a few nautical miles away, they will start moving now, you can see those two quickly approaching and already speeding their way towards the capsule, while there is still a little more work to do at this point, like you said, the recovery team has to be safe. the vehicle and then lift it to the recovery ship, however, obviously from the excited cheers here at Mission Control, the splashdown is a huge event for us in terms of safe reentry or making the safe return to Earth from the Internatio Station. space final that's right and you'll notice two boats on the way one boat is actually responsible for starting to secure the vehicle and getting it ready to get on the boat the other will go out and pick up those parachutes as those four main parachutes are actually thrown away from the spacecraft as soon as the vehicle detects that it's splashing down in the water, but if you missed it, I'm so sorry the dragon splashed down at 5:45 a.m.

PST, 8:45 a.m. over there on the East Coast where they're now moving in the Dragon spacecraft in the water ready to get it back exactly so as we said the recovery team has been ready and waiting the dragons place for me for a splashdown of dragons. I've been here since last night and I'm bringing you

coverage

from the departure of the dragon from the International Space Station to splashdown, so that's a big upcoming milestone and we're excited to bring you coverage of recovery operations as well, but we've got a few minutes before that happens so we're going to take a momentary break and continue to provide coverage as recovery operations progress so we're going to take a short break from operations because right now you have Benji Reed he's the director of commercial crew mission management here at SpaceX Benji, first of all, congratulations, splashdown successful, successful completion, Emma there, demo1, what was it like watching this mission?

What do you think? What are you waiting for to have a chance? to catch my breath thank you for having me here to be honest I'm a bit shaking and I'm so excited it was an amazing journey to get to this moment the teams just did an amazing job both SpaceX and NASA teams All in all it's fundamentally this is like a big day for the nation for SpaceX for NASA for all of us really for the world I think it was Ann who said this is the first time in 40 years that we have a spacecraft designed for humans to fly and not only did she blew up the space station she did everything but they brought her home safely she landed here in the atlantic just amazing i can't believe how well the whole mission is dog almost nothing at every point everything has been nailed every time , particularly this last part, we're all very excited to see as we go through the reentry and the parachute drop, the main deployment, the splashdown, it all happened. perfectly on time the way we expected it in the second and as a SpaceX team, you know we're here, we're very honored to have the opportunity for you to have done this mission that you've worked with NASA to work on this, you know that number one is fundamentally this first major milestone and our certification process.

I'd like to remind everyone that like this is a complete system, there's the crew dragon, but there's the Falcon that's going to be certified to fly humans, there's also all the ground systems, operations, our entire factory, and the production system, everything we do is certified to be able to safely fly astronauts and this is a big step towards that, looking back. what happened in the last few days seems incredible to me and really is the culmination of years of work to get to today. We had launch crew dragon deployed beautiful free flight one of the things that's hard to test when you're when you're on the ground is how microf how fluids work in microgravity so things like the support system all over the and and the amazing thing is that we're fine we're perfectly as we expected we have the station that I've docked and you know it's the first time I believe in history that a commercial vehicle and also a US vehicle has autonomously docked to the International Space Station so that's great, loaded with all kinds of sensors and all kinds of tests.

We did, we all met up with the rebuilt Ripley. Yes, you know that she is loaded with sensors so that we can understand exactly all the forces that will happen on the crew. They come as if they were launched and sent to the station. She comes home. We have the little earth man. so we for bob and dr. recover that's really exciting undocking of course some more free flight and then we came home dumped the trunk closed the warhead and then again like I said just a beautiful parachute deployment all just the way we expected , all these billions of tests that we've been doing. parachutes all the analysis and work we've done to understand the aerodynamics of reentry and return home it's all just wonderful what's important now is we'll take all this data we learned we love data to do so we took all that data excellent and we are going to apply them to the next steps so I think what comes next because believe it or not is excited and I like to keep shaking for this return there is a lot more to do well because our ultimate goal is to be able to continue with the correct Space Station staffing and providing astronauts trips to space give them a safe place to be a safe place to come home and do crew rotations every six months so how can we get there so we're done the demo a big milestone next we take the data we have from the client we learn from it and we're going to go to our abort test in Similar flight to the platform abort test we did a few years back, except this time we put the dragon, it's actually the same dragon that we flew in demo one that we're going to take that put it on top of a Falcon 9 launch, it went in super fast in test condition and then it escaped the Rocket and again do the same thing bring it home safely those parachutes landed there and then from there after we're done we go to demo 2 and that's like wow the grand prize, right because that's going to send Bob and Doug over? you know our astronauts and our partners and our friends sending them on the dragon getting them to the station safely sound and explode safely and then once that's done we'll go through full final certification and start those six rotation missions months that they were all so excited about you know it's impo It's important to take the kind of case, you can take a step back and think about everything it took to get here, all the work of all the joint teams at NASA and SpaceX, all the support we've gotten from your friends and family, and I really believe.

Most importantly, on behalf of all 6,000 people here at SpaceX, we really want to thank NASA, we want to thank the space station, international partners, and the American public for their support and partnership as we move this forward. . I'm so proud to be a part of this effort thank you for being here with us it's an early Friday morning here and in Hawthorne so for those of us who work here at SpaceX we still have a full work day and obviously you've already been working on demo 2 for a while though today how was the demo one day so i'm sure you guys like it we'll continue our work let's start talking about the next step we're concerned about thank you very much for being here with us congratulations to your team also on the success o Yes the last week has also been amazing for us to be able to share the hard work of all SpaceX employees with the public, so with that being said, thanks for being here, we're going to take a short break while we bring you more coverage. of the recovery operations you can see are ongoing on your screen to the left so stick around we'll be back in a couple right now we're expecting video of those recovery teams in the Atlantic by now though we have another guest to Today's broadcast, NASA Administrator Jim Bryden Stein, who's waiting at NASA headquarters in Washington DC, so I'll send it over to you, mr. girlfriend thoughts on today's mission what this means for now