SpaceX Crew Dragon Returns from Space Station on Demo-1 Mission

and we have motion you see the

dragon

physically separating from the international

space

station

1:32 am central time the international

space

station

253 statute miles above the sedan the houston station is supposed to launch is enabled copy is enabled so you can see on your screen the visual confirmation of how beautiful. shot

dragon

has undocked from the international space station and we are beginning the departure, that's right, you are going to hear the voice of david saint-jacques again, he is the one inside the station monitoring the departure of dragon force slowly retreating, everything looks good so far. with the separation burned again when Gary said physical separation and undocking will occur at 11:32 p.m. m. here at Pacific Station Houston at the exit of two dragons zero full, so he heard us mention before that we have a series of four exit burns that start with zero zero one. two three uh we have confirmation that game zero has been completed that's right so with that down we'll start to see a dragon start to fly over the international space station and then emerge in just a couple of minutes.

The second Burn uh exit will arrive, that should be about four or five minutes from now, so we'll see the dragon just swing over the space station and eventually fly out of the exclusion sphere and approach the ellipsoid, for what the keyboard sphere is one of my favorite things, it's an imaginary sphere with a radius of about 200 miles, so a radius of 200 or 200 meters would be a much larger sphere, a radius of 200 meters in all directions, um, and that just rules very kindly. Like the approach ellipsoid I explained before, before you are in the sphere, any maneuver with the spaceship must be safe and not enter the dragon that is in the corridor and, uh, the opening rate is as expected and the shock report from David St. everything looks good so far, you heard the runners say, so in their overlays that they have on their laptops aboard the station where they're actually monitoring the dragon, they're looking for any disturbances off the expected path if they see something that doesn't look right again, they are aware and can send commands, but everything is fine with the dragons flying slowly, this kind of animated representation of the kind of things the

crew

is looking for.

They have a corridor like that. that triangular shape that you can see there where they are just watching to make sure that the dragons approach, turn, accelerate everything like this or within the parameters as expected, the dragon continues to fly free, master, everything looks good so far, like this just in case, if you have done it. In case you're just tuning in, we're currently watching Dragon as he leaves the international space station. It's been a really smooth operation so far with the undocking procedure and now we're moving towards the exit as of now, you can see it on your screen.

The dragon capsule moves away from the approach ellipsoid. There we can see the nose cone still in its open position, leaving the front hatch exposed. We'll close it before the dragon's re-entry, so we'll continue to get really great views of the dragon's bottom. In the darkness of space you'll see the cameras are a little choppy and they're on their emotions, they're actually being controlled by someone on the ground at

mission

control, we always like to talk about how at

mission

control in Houston. That's where they actually fly the space station, that's where they control everything from the cameras and communication to even the thermostat on board the space station.

If it's too hot for the

crew

, they talk to the ground and they're the ones who can turn the AC outside, but it's actually someone on a console right now who's controlling those cameras sending commands just to move all the pants, tilt, focus Everything else, they're doing from a console on the ground while the thing flies 250 statute miles above the ground. On the other side of the planet, as Dan mentioned before, we're going very fast right now, we're doing about 17,500 miles per hour, so everything is moving very fast. The need to readjust the cameras very frequently is inherent due to the high speeds we are dealing with, so this is a view from that wb 57 plane you were looking at, dragons crossing the sky on their re-entry into the earth's atmosphere aiming landing any moment from now, so it's very exciting that we're getting the photo right now, as it's our first view from planet Earth of the dragon capsule since it took off from Cape Canaveral just a few days ago.

I will say that it is a rather rare pleasure to be able to see this. here and again this video comes from a NASA aircraft that we are flying around that recovery zone there, a WB-57 that is commonly used for many atmospheric studies and other scientific missions. I have been able to place a trail camera on it. to try to achieve this re-entry through the earth's atmosphere today we heard that they should have also acquired the signal with the dragon spacecraft at this moment it is about 46 kilometers altitude the dragon spacecraft continues to descend now it is subsonic, so it is already starting to slow down thanks to aerodynamic braking, basically crashing into the earth's atmosphere causes a lot of friction and allows the vehicle to eventually reach its terminal velocity basically and then those parachutes will activate, so there you have the digital confirmation of the deployment of our parachutes of braking, this is the first of two parachute deployments, so those dope shots do the initial deceleration and then will finally take out the four main parachutes responsible for actually decelerating the spacecraft before that splash that you can hear applauding here at headquarters from Spacex, as the employees who have gathered around our mission control center share the same view as you, what a beautiful photo of the dragon returning and here come the main ones, in the next few seconds we will see those main parachutes exactly like that begin They expand as they capture more air, further slowing the dragon vehicle towards the Atlantic Ocean.

You really can't ask for a more perfect shot than that and yes, the four shots now deployed will continue to descend, continue to slow down and then finally we will land in the Atlantic, there we are now at less than a kilometer altitude, just a few more to go. 750 meters in case if you're just joining us, you can see on your screen that the dragon reentering the ear just reentered. the earth's atmosphere after leaving the international space station we have a beautiful photo of four healthy parachutes deployed and decelerating the vehicle as it approaches the surface of the atlantic ocean off the coast of florida and continues to descend under those shots that Just passed 500 meters, everything still looks good via reports to all flight control teams.

Now we are about 400 meters away and we have just passed 300 meters. Continuing down, we might arrive just in time. We were planning to land around 5:45am. Pacific and we are getting very close to that bingo time just after 200 meters and we have confirmation that the Dragon is now below 100 meters, it is 100 meters above the ocean surface so the next turn is waiting the splashdown and there we have it. Confirmation of the dragon's splashdown has returned to planet Earth. Now it's back home and you can see on your screen our two speedboats racing towards the now recovering capsule.

The splashdown arrived just in time. 5 45 a. m. in the Pacific 8 45 a. m. On the east coast the teams that have been ready and waiting were placed just a few nautical miles away they are going to start moving now you can see those two fast approach boats already accelerating their way towards the capsule right now we are just waiting dragon to get up and out of the water and into the nest, there it goes so they are facing us, it's what we call the side hatch and that's where, as Dan just mentioned, the astronauts would do it if we had astronauts on board today , where they would be.

Exiting through the top hatch is what we use to connect to the iss and it is currently hidden under the nose cone, but as we said the astronauts will exit through the side hatch and we got a nice photo there, now the hydraulic elevator is coming back. comes back towards us and is preparing to lower the dragon capsule to its nest as we said, we are treating this

demo

nstration mission with the recovery operations as if there were real astronauts on board and of course before we could be able to open the capsule . hatch, we would need to make sure the spaceship's cabin pressure is equal to the outside environment before doing so, once the dragon is seated and you can hear some clapping behind me like the remaining people we have here in the

spacex

team out of mission control.

They are applauding the placement of the dragon in the nest there as you can see.