SpaceX #CrewDragon Demonstration Flight Return to Earth

all stations on dragon one minute until set for terminal count 30 seconds 15 seconds on welcome to our live coverage of the

spacex

demo one mission if you're just joining us dragon has performed its final exit burns from the international space station and is on its way Coming home, today's mission actually began on March 2, when Dragon launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after that successful launch, Dragon arrived at the space station and docked to the orbital laboratory on March 3. Dragon's

return

to Earth will mark the third completion of Spacex's first

demonstration

mission for NASA's commercial crew program.

While there are no astronauts aboard the Dragons today, this

demonstration

mission represents an important milestone as we approach our first raw mission later this year. Today, the Dragon booted up from sleep mode and began its procedures and exit system. checks that it is correct and then the spacecraft autonomously undocked from the international space station at 11:32 p.m. Pacific Time yesterday, March 7. I'm pretty sure it's March 8th. We've been here all night and then a series of burn-outs began. to get away from the station, we'll bring you live coverage of the rest of the mission from the moment the dragon throws its trunk into the deorbit burn until the landing we're planning for 5:45 a.m.

Pacific time. with dragons scheduled to land about 230 statute miles east of the Kennedy Space Center, an interesting historical note for you real quick, it's actually been almost 50 years since Apollo 9 was the last spacecraft built for humans to land on the Atlantic. Their mission dates back to March 13, 1969, so it's a pretty important day and a pretty important historical note. Unfortunately, due to a communications blackout, we will not be able to show you every step of the dragon's journey home, where we will take him. you get status updates as it goes through the phase of things like orbit burn and trunk separation and we've been getting great views from the recovery ships so we should get good views of the dragon as it descends towards the water, yes, now in this next phase of the mission, the dragon has a series of steps to complete before

return

ing home.

The first dragon will get rid of its trunk, as Dan just said, which is the pressureless cylindrical part of the spaceship. We do this because the trunk is no longer there. necessary to complete the mission, yes, that will happen in about 15 minutes or so and as we said, we can't show every part of this for the mission, but we will listen to the

flight

control teams and we have one here right behind us and Hawthorne and they are the ones that basically monitor all the dragon systems just like they've been doing since it took off six days ago, it's flown so far, it really has, but we're going to be listening and giving you updates as they come in now if you've been following 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 dragon full of a series of burns there was a series of exit burns outside the international space station that the dragon completed, allowing the spacecraft to move further and further away from the station in a series of choreographed maneuvers, everything went very well and as we said now we are just waiting for separation of the trunk and after that we will have a pretty exciting deorbitation and splashdown, so we are looking forward to all that.

Yes, at this point the Dragon spacecraft is well below the international space station and quite a bit. a few kilometers ahead at this point and that's just to make sure that once the log has separated it's not basically in the same orbital plane as the international space station, so that will be the next major milestone coming up and then that deorbit burn that will go through all of those times in a moment, but it will be about a 15 minute firing of those thrusters on Dragon and that will basically take it out of orbit, so it will fire these thrusters up to that trajectory. it's basically pointing towards the ocean in the atlantic where we will be landing a spaceship built for humans for the first time in 50 years so this is going to be a really exciting morning and like i said we're going to bring you some cool views the sun has already risen in the east coast, so we'll have a nice splashdown during the day, as someone who has seen this specific vehicle being built over the last few years, it's pretty incredible, as I mentioned earlier in today's webcast.

To actually see the astronauts aboard the international space station floating in and out of the capsule as they opened the hatch and that was very exciting and then as they depart, it burns before to see the footage of the station as the dragon climbed out, it was just amazing, we had some amazing shots and we have seen the artistic renderings for a couple of years, what it would look like when Dragon was on the station and to finally see it was just a wonderful moment in terms of those of us who have had so much. Many hours invested in this spaceship almost didn't seem real, yes, when you actually saw it flying there, but I mean, as it is part of it, it happened early in the day of the cruise aboard the space station, so from So they moved.

Moving on to a bunch of other tests, they actually woke up about an hour before Crew Dragon undocked meanwhile they were operating out of Greenwich, so it was early morning for them, but they offered some great words when Dragon undocked and it flew away once it was outside the approach ellipsoid, about a kilometer away from the international space station, and as Kate said, it executed all of its exit burns and executed four exit burns after that initial separation, basically taking it out. in front and then up and then finally below the international space station where it is now in its orbit waiting for this trunk separation and eventually the deorbit burns up, yes in terms of Spacex history this demonstration mission is incredibly important As I said, the demonstration of our crew program, interestingly enough, the Dragon spacecraft hanging behind me here and the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, is similarly the same demonstration mission of our cargo program that we have been operating for NASA over the last few years in terms of cargo resupply missions to the international space station, so who?

Do you know if the demo capsule will also be behind us here at 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 reference to the importance of the mission today and That Capsule actually already has another mission on the books. Spacex is planning to use it in its ascent abort test, which will happen a little later this year and will be between demonstration one that we're about to wrap up today and demonstration two. what will be the first

flight

there, we actually have our astronauts on board that spacecraft, bob bankin and doug hurley, the two astronauts from nasa will be the first to take dragon into space and the climb on board will be quite a test interesting to see.

I wouldn't want to get involved in this because it's a lot of G forces, but it will be really very important for us to be able to demonstrate the ability of the capsule to exit the vehicle in an urgent need. We are all looking forward to that test flight as it is also something we have been working on for the last few years and yes, that should happen in a couple of months here, yes, and it will. the second of what you guys did because you already did a paddle board test with a dragon spaceship, so you basically just put the vehicle through its paces at all rates, all these different abort test missions like this one right now, all of them. ultimately with the goal of sending humans to the international space station, not a dragon crew, yeah, something else really interesting about today's mission and indeed the commercial crew program in terms of Spacex's approach to landing the capsules, we are landing them in the Atlantic like us. mentioned earlier, uh, while the commercial, excuse me, the cargo resupply mission dragon capsule capsules have all landed in the pacific, so today is really exciting, we're really excited to bring you images from our team of recovery as we pull the dragon out of the Atlantic Ocean, it's a lot of firsts today, it's been a lot, it's been a lot of firsts all week and to say that the adrenaline has been pumping around here is an understatement, yes, we even, I mean, we even had a crowd this morning behind us gathered behind us. in control and there are more clouds now, well 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, usually those dragons of cargo land in the Pacific and while this vehicle designed ultimately for crew also carries some cargo, it carried about 400 pounds of cargo to the international space station and has been packed with a little more than 300 pounds for the trip.

I come home and that breaks down into a couple of different areas. One of the most interesting ones and one that NASA is really interested in is that it is recovering what we call utilization, so some scientific samples actually have two bags that are basically like refrigerators on board that are full of these cold bricks that They were able to put scientific samples so that those of us who return home today using some of the human research projects aboard the international space station like to say that astronauts are experiments in themselves, we are always poking and prodding while they are there alone to See how the human body changes and reacts in microgravity and a lot of the samples from a couple of those projects are coming home to Dragon today, they're also bringing home a couple of radiation monitors and one thing that our program director, Kirk Shirem , and for the space station.

The program noted that it will also have a fan pump separator and that is actually a part of the spacesuits. The UEM are the extra-vehicular mobility units. I'm from NASA and we still use too many acronyms and it's a part that actually failed in orbit some time ago and then I brought it home to take a look at it, it's since been replaced with a spare unit and we have some spacewalks in March, so we're very busy in space right now, but right now everything is focused on Seeing this dragon come home, so the next milestone we'll have in about seven minutes is the trunk separation.

We'll take a break for a few minutes while we wait for you, so stay tuned and we'll see you in a couple. So right now we're waiting to hear that separation from Trump again. We expect to receive that call only on internal networks at any time. That will be the next major milestone and then it will be in orbit exactly. So we should have that call anytime while we wait for trunk separation, this is the last thing the dragon has to do before it can re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and fall into the Atlantic Ocean, that's right, yeah. trump does not return home, but the rest of the dragon capsule, the most important part will be returning home, the other things the dragon will do before doing so, that final re-entry is closing the nose cone and we will go through a a little bit of that uh soon but basically that nose cone will protect the top of the dragon spacecraft, the docking adapter and also the guidance, navigation and control sensors um so that's one of the last milestones important, so it's another type of departure from the cargo dragon that that nose cone is discarded during the launch during the launch phase, but with the crew dragging keeping the nose throughout, it helps the actual reuse of the dragon of crew for future missions now that the trunk section is not pressurized and we can use it to transport cargo on the way to the international space station, but everything that returns from the station is placed in the pressurized section, so we can discard that trunk because it is no longer necessary and we can get rid of it. that extra weight and I think we just heard the trunk separating so hopefully we'll be able to bring you a picture here shortly, not really we're a long way from the station at the moment so yeah yeah so next it will be uh. the spacecraft uses some forward thrusters to do the deorbit burn, this is going to be a really important step because once that deorbit burn happens, you come home and feel like you'releaving orbit and returning. back to

earth

and that will put the dragon on a trajectory for that return, the burn will last about 15 minutes once it starts so we will continue to wait again, this is kind of the calm before the storm so to speak, right? where we are?

We're just waiting for things to really get moving. The Dragon will very soon do that deorbit burn and then it will only take about 45 minutes or so until it is in the water in the Atlantic and ready to be picked up by the teams. the ships out there so once again we will continue to wait we will bring you these updates as they come but one more milestone just a few more to go and then the dragons home and so on again right now. We're waiting for this deorbit combustion to begin. We expect it to start in about a minute or so and after that it will take a little over 15 minutes to complete.

Yes, so we've already disposed of the trunk as you heard us. We talked a couple of minutes ago about how that was the last thing the dragon needed to do before it could re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and, as we said, that's going to be a combustion of approximately 15 minutes and then we will have the parachute deployment and splash. After that, as Dan said, in a sort of calm before the storm, we are going to have a lot of activity once we go through the reentry process, but at this point we should receive confirmation of the deorbitation process.

A couple of seconds here, that's about right, and once the deorbit is complete, it's just a case of trying to do quick calculations in my head while I look at everything, but there's about 40 minutes or so until Dragon is scheduled to return to the bottom. water so it's a pretty quick trip from being in outer space to being back in the ocean and we just heard confirmation of the deorbit burn so like we said this is going to last about 15 minutes so the burning has begun repeat burning. At this point the dragon has begun to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, it will get a little warm, but we are excited for this to happen as it is the next step, the next milestone on its journey home, that's right and again definitive. destination in the atlantic ocean and there are ships waiting, we will review all the recovery forces and everything that is on site, but there is a main recovery ship, the go searcher, and on it will be all the

spacex

recovery teams that are responsible for going out and collecting the capsule from the water that is a view of the go finder this is actually a camera view of one of the other ships that is in the area the go navigator that has the combined nasa team on board as well , once we have crew on board, everyone will be on one vote, so there will be a little bit tighter spaces, but obviously you will have the Spacex people to go recover the capsule and then usually the people from The NASA.

Also bring the flight docks and nurses. Anyone who has seen a Soyuz landing in Kazakhstan knows that once the crew returns home after a period of about six months, it is important that we give them a quick medical checkup. vitals make sure they're okay and help manage while they readjust or it's gravity for the first time in six months or more so everyone will be on one boat but for today we have two boats so hopefully , we'll get some additional views from those different chambers as we see the dragon descend, but for now we're on that deorbit, so we've got a couple more minutes until that's complete and then we'll be one step closer to the dragon.

We're back, yes, so the wild dragon is re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. We're going to pause for a few minutes until the dew orbit burn is complete, so make sure you stick around and we'll see you in a few minutes, so right now. We're halfway through the deorbiting process, so again we expect it to last about 15 minutes and 20 seconds. The visiting vehicle officer all the way back to Houston was again informing the station flight director that we were halfway there. We're still getting a couple of 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-57, so We have a number of assets out there off the coast of Florida, again, there are two boats or two boats, both with tracking cameras on board and NASA also flies their wb57 aircraft, which is typically used for large-scale weather research. altitude and other scientific missions. but it has a camera fixed on it and hopefully it should give us some views of the dragon going down under those parachutes, so on your screen you'll see a nice photo of Go Searcher, which is our main recovery boat at the front of the ship. you can see what essentially the quarters of the cruise ship would be during the wait, they could be out to sea depending on how strong the waves are for a couple of weeks or just a couple of days depending on the fire or the landing point, so they are entering. the view on the right side of the screen at the top is actually the helipad for the helicopters to land on if we need to get the astronauts to shore faster than just getting them on the ship and that's really something I love about this.

The ship under the helipad is actually medical quarters, so we can have the astronauts checked right after they get out of the capsule and we can check them there and give them a warm welcome, obviously they're not on the ground yet, but it's just There's such an incredible vehicle there that we can keep so much activity going while we wait for the astronauts to land and then obviously once they're on board, it's also important to note that right now the crews are around 200 or so miles away. coastal nautical, that will not be the case when we bring crew members back to that landing zone much closer to the end.

I think it's typically between 20 and 24 nautical miles or so from the port, so it gives them the ability to get back in just a couple of hours rather than the little over a day it looks like it will take the teams to bring back to Dragon after this mission, but there we have some opinions of Dragon. It's re-entering the atmosphere, it's pretty dark in space, yeah, we're still in the middle of that deorbitation. We expect it to take about five more minutes, so it's pretty unique to get views from the spacecraft while that deorbit burns up. is still underway again, this is just the final maneuver, the final firing of those draco thrusters just to get the dragon out of orbit and set it on a trajectory to finally land there in the atlantic where, as you were seeing, the recovery teams are waiting ready and waiting to receive and again this deorbit burn lasts or plans to last about 15 minutes and 20 seconds and this is just to finally knock the dragon out of its circular orbit, so right now it has been in a circular orbit just below the Spacial station. orbit we call it eco-elliptical orbit for the last few hours in this deorbit burn, it's going to radically change that planned orbit, basically preparing it to intersect with the Earth again down there in the water where the recovery teams are waiting now that we have a full view of the recovery ship on the right side of the 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 capsule is close enough, it will be lifted off of the water by that vertical piece that you see there, 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 that Cool, this is new, a new technology which we have installed on this ship specifically for our dragon team missions, so it's like we said before, this is a demonstration mission and while a recovery team has been practicing for recovery operations, this is obviously, the first time they're going to be practicing with a vehicle coming from space, so we're all very excited to give you live coverage as this all unfolds over the next hour or so and yeah, and give you a timeline of After that period recovery, it is expected to take teams a little less than an hour to reattach the capsule to the ship, which in a situation where there is crew on board, is about that hour to get the crew out of the water and on the ship so they can do all their initial medical checks and everything else that we normally do after crew members return from these long duration missions.

The waves look pretty calm although they seem to have really good conditions out there. They are in the Atlantic again. a little more than 200 nautical miles from the coast of Florida and finally they will return to Puerto Canaveral where they will bring the spacecraft and deliver it to the spacex teams there where they will begin processing and we are practically preparing to turn around the asset allocation , yes, yes, we have been monitoring the recovery weather conditions for the last few days and now that recovery day has arrived, we can see that we have beautiful skies and really Well, according to my non-professional nautical knowledge, relatively calm seas according to my eyes, but you know, it's very difficult to predict what the weather will be like at sea long in advance, so we're all very happy to be able to do it.

I can 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 fern, so we're just done with that and again, this is just the final maneuver to start getting the dragon out of space and into the ocean. We're still getting a couple of views from aboard the Dragon spacecraft, that's what you're seeing right now, so that's cool. Now we're just going to sit still and listen to how the deorbiting process went.

It should conclude momentarily, so as Dan said, we're waiting for confirmation of the conclusion of the deorbiting process. It's been happening for the last few minutes and like us. said before Dragon departed the space station today it performed a series of exit burns and now hopefully we're coming out of the final burn and that's the reentry burn and there on the left side of your screen you can see our recovery ship waiting. for the dragon splashdown, once we get out of this, um, once we get out of the reentry burn, we will have the parachute deployment, the first of them will be the drogue shots, the smaller shots that slow down the vehicle, followed by deployment of the main parachute. and that will slow it down even more, allowing it to reach a slower speed as it approaches 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 and so the next thing that will happen is that the dragon's nose will close. We have heard that the process is already underway and then it will be time for the dragon to actually pass through the Earth's atmosphere and finally land, so that is where the vehicle will go. it heats up tremendously because again you have to keep in mind that the dragon is traveling at thousands of miles per hour right now and when it hits the thickest part of the

earth

's atmosphere it will heat up tremendously from the friction and this is actually a video of the cone of nose. starting to close on the dragon spacecraft and again that nose cone just closes to protect the top of the vehicle from all reentry events, uh, not just reentry through Earth's atmosphere but also once it's in the water and that protects the guidance, navigation and control sensors on the top of the dragon and also the docking ring that it uses to connect to the space station, so again what you are seeing now is the nose cone closing over the dragon spaceship while we wait for it. to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, so that the tip gun appears to be almost closed, we'll wait for a final confirmation, uh, that everything looks good, but very soon we'll be looking towards the actual entry interface.

So that's again where the dragon starts hitting enough atmosphere to start warming up because right now it's still high enough, even after that deorbit burn you still don't feel those effects, the atmosphere will get thicker as to start descending and that's "I'm going to 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 them have this conical shape, because a lot of engineers with those I have spoken to like to say that physics hasIt hasn't changed since the 1960s when we made the spacecraft back then, that's why it was shaped like that for a reason and that's why it's so common to see this capsule design, just because of the way it's made. re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, a long time ago.

It doesn't make sense, so we just heard confirmation that the nose cone hooks have begun the process of securing the nose cone in place before that re-entry burn, that's right, so there's actually an early moment where the signal is lost with the spacecraft and that's just because As you re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and go through that intense heat, the plasma builds up in the outside of the spacecraft and you cannot send or receive signals from there, so it is very common when there are people on board to lose voice communication between them and Earth and you will lose all the telemetry of the data streams coming. from the spacecraft to rooms like the mission control center right behind us here at Hawthorne, so we'll go up.

We're expecting that to happen around five, what time is 5:33 AM? m. from the Pacific, so it will arrive in about 20 minutes exactly from now and, after we can get through that phase of the mission, as we said before, the next one will be the deployment of the parachutes and then landing, so just a quick summary in case you joined us recently, we have left the international space station. Dragon completed a series of four egress burns in a slowly choreographed maneuver and we have now jettisoned the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft, completed orbit burn and are now beginning to return through Earth's atmosphere and the final leg.

On the Dragon's way home, that's right, the nose cones close and we're just there. I'll be waiting until we get through that entrance interface and it'll be about 20 minutes from now uh and then once I'm down there it'll be time for the parachutes and we talked about the parachutes a little while ago and hopefully we should be able to see those parachutes maybe from the plane, but once it's below the cloud cover, so we should be able to see them from the boats that will be waiting and outside in the recovery zone and it comes in two different stages.

Can you guide us through the parachutes real quick? Yes, with parachutes. We'll have the drop parachutes, those are the smaller shoots that will come out that will slow the vehicle down a little bit and then we'll have the main parachutes, which are clearly visible because of the orange and white color, very iconic if you have them. We saw the previous dragon splashdowns for cargo resupply missions, so we'll have that and then that's what will slow the vehicle enough to have a safe splashdown in the water, so at this point, another fun fact about the dragon on return to earth: The seats inside the capsule at this point have been activated or rotated to the re-entry position, so depending on what phase of the mission we are in, the seats are They will activate or adjust the angle to ensure the G forces that the astronauts will endure. experimenting are in the right places so with that being said we will be taking a short break as active operations here at spacex um so with that being said we will be taking a short break be sure to stay tuned to us as we go through this period of anticipation. blackout with the dragon capsule, we'll be back in a few as we'll be back in anticipation of parachute deployment, stay around, so if you're just joining us, we've had a successful deorbitation, so that was the last major milestone.

Oh, we've also confirmed that the nose cone is closed, all the hooks are engaged, so now we're just waiting for the dragon to start making its way through the Earth's atmosphere. The orbit lasted a little over 15 minutes and was reported to have been successful, there were no problems and the dragon is now on its way home. We continue to get great views from the boats in the splashdown area and will also be on the lookout for some video, possibly from an airplane. that we have in the area, one of NASA's wb 57 research aircraft will try to get some views of the dragon and the parachute deployment and in fact as we descend below the parachutes there are some clouds in the area so ships may not see you well. away, but once you get below those cloud covers, you'll have great views of it falling, so there on your screen again you'll be able to see our main recovery ship, which okay, there it went, but that's our recovery ship. recovery that is fully equipped. with medical rooms for checks once we have crew aboard the dragon for our next missions, you will be able to exit the capsule and get a full medical check immediately afterwards.

There is also a helipad there where a helicopter can land in case you may need to get them back to port sooner than the ship can get there and there on your screen you can see, as I mentioned before, that the elevator that will take out the dragon from the water has put it in its recovery position, so what you can see on the right side of the screen at the end of the boat and that is what will actually take the dragon out of the water, pick it up and then place it in its nest, which is the official term for him on the ship. and so that would be considered the end at least when we get to that point which will 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 that, as I, As I mentioned The recovery team has practiced this before, but obviously not with a ship that has come down from the international space station yet, so we'll see a lot of new things today and we're very excited to be able to share them with you.

Yes, and if you missed the beginning, the fun historical tip we have today is that it's been almost 50 years since we landed a spacecraft designed for humans in the Atlantic Ocean; the last one was Apollo 9 and that was March 13, 1969. It was actually supposed to land in the Pacific, but it ended up shooting into the Atlantic and that was the last time they landed one in that area, so it will be exciting to see this water recovery for our entire crew. Members for the last few years basically since we stopped flying the space shuttle have landed in Kazakhstan on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but in the not too distant future we will have crew members Doug uh Doug Hurley and Bob Bankin. uh still waking up uh they'll be on the dragon for demo mission 2 a little bit later this year so everything is looking pretty good so far we're just going to keep waiting and waiting for that input interface we're already about 20 minutes away.

We're hoping to see a dragon under those parachutes, so there's not much good stuff left to come. There is a lot of anticipation. There's a crowd growing behind me here at Spacex headquarters. Our mission control center is down there and you can. We'll probably hear voices in the room around us and the crowd is definitely starting to grow in anticipation of the dragon's reappearance, so with that being said, we'll take a short break while we wait for the dragon to re-enter and the parachutes to deploy. 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 as it again gets closer and closer to that entry interface that goes through the Earth's atmosphere and then splash around in 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.

We are following the teams, there is a lot of enthusiasm, how do you feel about the mission so far? Well, I think I said this before, when we were here for the climb phase and we docked, very excited, you know, of course, this is the precursor to our mission coming up here and when this is successfully completed, we will be a step closer to our flight, that's amazing, yeah, so what's in store for you between now and that flight? What kind of preparations do you have left to do? great question we have a significant amount of training that we need to do so we will go through all the different phases of the flight so we will do the prelaunch we will adapt we will do it here at Hawthorne in the money we will go through it at Kennedy Space Center actually on the launch pad we'll learn a little bit more about the emergency escape system if we need it before launching into space and so we'll walk through all those different scenarios, then we'll come back here again for a couple of other events associated with docking and , of course, with reentry, so we'll get views of the inside of the dragon spaceship and I mean, a camera is nice, but it can't.

Do it justice, what's it like to be on a spaceship when you come back and everything is heating up? Yes, there are a couple of pieces of the return through the atmosphere. The first one is really emotional for those of us who have seen many spacecraft return, it is very special to go through that experience and it is something physical, as well as seeing the light from the atmosphere as it heats the external parts of the spacecraft. Some flashing orange plasma lights pass by the windows, the windows will be down near our feet in this vehicle, that will be our closest view out the window per se, but it's definitely something we'll be able to see and know about.

The exterior of the vehicle is going through something pretty severe and we expect it to take care of us as it carries us through the driveway. Is incredible. I can't even imagine what that experience could be. There is the physical part that you can. You know the sensations that come with light, but there is also the thrill of knowing that you are taking all that energy that you put into the vehicle to put it into orbit; Everything has to come out so you can return to land safely, so it's been a while since you've been in space.

Is there anything you're really looking forward to when you arrive at the space station? Something like what's your to-do list once you get back up. You know when it arrives. Returning to the international space station, I really want to see it completely complete. I was pretty close with my flight. We put the dome at the bottom of the space station. One of the things close to complete construction in the international space. season, so I'm looking forward to getting back there and experiencing sunrises and sunsets again. They are simply extraordinary from orbit, they are not exactly the same as from Earth and I can't get them anywhere else.

Last question for you. I'm sure you've followed me on social media. Have you seen the photos of our zero gravity indicator. Now he won't come back until you bring him to us, so you'll have some time to play. him while you're at the station, is there anything you'd like to show a little earthly while you're at the station with him? Yes, that's a good question. I actually didn't realize the little earthling was staying on board. the space station until lee rosen, one of your friends here at spacex, came and let us know when we sat down to watch the undocking and said, hey, we're going to need erthy to come back, so i think our plan is for him to teach. us, he will probably welcome us aboard when we get there and I think Ann, David and Oleg have trained him well, so I hope he can guide us through the emergency report and be a full member of the station crew for when we arrive.

Well it definitely sounds like he's been getting a crash course in just about everything, he should have it all and he should be able to transfer it to us, that's part of being a crew member arriving and taking on responsibilities on the international space station. That's great, we're certainly looking forward to him returning, as are you and Doug, on our demo mission 2 in a couple of months, so be very excited, looking forward to it, as you can also imagine us we, thank you, well. We're going to go back to the re-entry interface, Bob, we'll let you keep watching because, again, the best thing is that thank you very much for going up the stairs real quick and talking about it.

Thanks again, thank you very much, thank you very much. that we are awaiting deployment or it being the final phase of re-entry of the Dragon spacecraft as it returns through Earth's atmosphere. I'm still a little stunned by his comments about what it's really like to come at full speed. the earth's atmosphere, uh, something you see depicted in movies and TV shows of course, but hearing it live from the source is cool and that's exactly what Dragon and Ripley are doing right now, so we brought you a live view of that only makes a couple. A few minutes ago it was cool that we were able to get that shot like we said, uh, the plasma will build up on the outside of the vehicle as it re-enters the atmosphere,so there's a blackout period that we were expecting and that's where we are right now, but we can't give you a view of Ripley on her journey back to the Atlantic Ocean.

You can see a view of our recovery ship there, like I said before. Now we can see that the lift arms have been activated. the recovery position and are thus in anticipation of the dragon being dragged to a position closer to the end of the ship and being lifted to the recovery nest and you have to imagine that the teams that are in the ocean are ready. for this to come home as they are about 200 nautical miles or so out to sea they actually left yesterday so they have been in the water for some time so they are ready and waiting again the main team is in that. go to the seeker and that's a group of Spacex technicians that will be responsible for going out on some fast craft that will deploy from that main ship and start basically stabilizing the capsule and then bringing it closer to finally hoisting it. on the ship will also make sure that they get those parachutes as they are jettisoned from the capsule almost right at the time of landing, so we'll be ready to see all of that play out very soon.

We'll see those parachutes 10 or 11 minutes from now, just after the dragon begins its final dive into Earth's atmosphere, so we're getting a lot closer. Things will really improve once we use them for the first time. Atlantic there, absolutely so dandruff-like, said we have about 10 minutes until we see the first deployment, which is the drug parachute deployments, so with that being said, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a few do as we get closer to parachute deployment, so this is a view from that wb 57 plane that you were watching dragons crossing the sky on their re-entry into the earth's atmosphere with the goal of landing in no time from now, so it's very exciting that we have this 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 pretty rare gift to be able to see. this here and again this this video comes from a nasaplane that we are flying around that recovery zone there, a wb 57, which is commonly used for many atmospheric studies and other scientific missions. I have been able to attach a tracking camera to try to achieve this re-entry through Earth. In the atmosphere today we heard that they should have also acquired the signal with the Dragon spacecraft right now it's about 46 kilometers altitude yeah so just for guidance purposes if you've seen our launches before you might be familiar with angling. of this as a reminder of takeoff, this is a re-entry, the plane is below the dragon spaceship and the camera is looking up as it passes over the spaceship, so it appears that based on the orientation of the images, the dragon is going up when in reality It's still coming back to Earth and again keeping it on the timeline, so we actually acquire the signal about a minute earlier than expected, where we'll be looking for those initial deployments of drogue shots at about the 41 minutes.

After the hour, so after the dragon comes down a little bit, we'll keep an eye out and see the drogue shots deploy initially, followed by those four main parachutes, much larger and capable of slowing the vehicle down for a while. . A much gentler splash in the ocean. We should be doing that drug drop in about two minutes and I just heard we're now below 30 kilometers and if you're just tuning in, this is the dragon, this is the dragon coming home. This is from a camera aboard a chase plane there at the landing zone over the Atlantic about 200 nautical miles off the coast of Florida.

We are less than 30 kilometers away and we continue descending to the next milestone we will be looking for. it's the parachute deployment and we hear we're now at about 20 kilometers altitude man the dragon spaceship continues to descend it's subsonic now so it's already starting to slow down thanks to the bug basically crashing into the atmosphere ground causes a lot of friction and allows the vehicle to finally reach its terminal velocity basically and then those parachutes will activate, so there you have the usual confirmation of the deployment of our braking parachutes. This is the first of two parachute deployments, so those dope shots do the initial deceleration and then ultimately we'll take out the four main parachutes responsible for actually decelerating the spacecraft before that flash.

You can hear applause here at Spacex headquarters as the employees who have gathered around our mission control center share the same view as you, what a beautiful photo. of the dragon coming back down and here from the power grid for the next few seconds like this to expand as they capture more air further slowing the dragon vehicle towards the Atlantic Ocean I really can't ask for a more perfect shot than that and yes, all four shots now deployed it will continue to descend it will continue to slow down and finally it will land at the Atlantic fair now we are below a kilometer of altitude there are only about 750 meters left in case you are just joining us You can see on your screen the dragon reentering.

You have just re-entered 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. atlantic ocean off the coast of florida and continues to descend under those shoots, we just passed 500 meters, everything still looks good through reports to all flight control teams, we are now at about 400 meters and just passed 300 meters, we continue descending. It could be just in time. We were planning to land around 5:45 a.m. 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 surface. of the ocean, the next turn is waiting for splashdown and there we have confirmation that the dragon has returned to planet Earth. Now it's back home and you can see on your screen our two speedboats racing towards the capsule now recovering from that splashdown. It arrived right on time 5 45 a.m. m. Pacific 8 45 a. m. on the east coast the teams that have been ready and waiting were located just a few nautical miles away they are going to start moving now you can see those two express access roads are already speeding their way towards the capsule, well there is still a ways to go little more work to do at this point, as we said, the recovery team has to salvage the vehicle and then lift it into the recovery vessel, however, obviously from the excited cheering here on the mission. controlling the landing is a huge event for us in terms of the safe reentry or, excuse me, the safe return to Earth from the international space station, that's right, and you'll notice two ships on the way, one ship actually responsible for starting to secure the vehicle . and get him ready to get on the boat, the other one is going to go pick up those parachutes, since those four main shoots will actually be jettisoned from the spacecraft as soon as the vehicle detects that it has fallen into the water, but if you failed I'm really sorry because that was really cool.

The dragon landed at 5:45 a.m. Pacific Time, 8:45 a.m. m. there on the east coast, where they are now moving in a dragon spaceship in the water ready to retrieve it exactly like that. As we said, the recovery team has been ready and waiting for the dragon splash today for the dragon splashdown, it's been all afternoon this morning, Dan and I have been here since last night. I bring you coverage of the departure of a dragon from the international space station. all the way to splashdown, so it's a big next milestone and we're excited to bring you coverage of the recovery operations as well, but we have a few minutes before that happens, so we're going to take a momentary break and continue. provide cover as recovery operations progress oh foreigner so we're going to take a short break from operations because right now we have benji reed he's the director of commercial crew mission management here at spacex, benji first of all, congratulations, successful landing.

I finished them or showed one. What has it been like to see this mission? What are your thoughts? What are you waiting for? You had a chance to catch your breath. No, but I'm very excited. Thanks for inviting me here. To be honest, I'm a little shaking and I'm super, you know, excited, it was an incredible journey to get to this moment. The teams just did an incredible job, both the SpaceX team and the NASA team together. Basically 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 fly and go to the space station she did everything she was supposed to do, but he brought her home safe and sound, she landed here in Atlanta, just amazing.

I can't believe how well the whole mission went. I think that in all points everything has been perfect. the way along, uh particularly this last piece, you know, we're all very excited to see as we go through the re-entry and the parachute deployment and the main deployment landing, it all happened perfectly, just in time, the way that we expected, almost until the second. second, it was incredible and as a team, um spacex, you know we're here, we're very honored to have the opportunity to have done this mission to work with NASA to solve this um, you know, number. one is fundamentally this first important milestone in our process towards certification.

I always like to remind everyone that this is a complete system, there is the dragon crew, but there is the falcon that will be certified to fly with humans, there are also all the ground systems, the operations. The entire factory and the production system, everything we do is certified to be able to transport astronauts safely and this is a big step towards that, you know, as we look back and remember what happened in the last few days, which I find it incredible and it really is the culmination of years of work to get to this day.

We had the Dragon launch crew deployed in a beautiful free flight. One of the things that is difficult to test when you are on the ground is how micro the fluids work. in microgravity, so things like the propeller system and all that, and the amazing thing is that it worked perfectly, just as we expected, we have the station that we docked and, you know, I think it's the first time in history that a commercial vehicle and also an American vehicle has docked autonomously to the international space station, so that's cool, it's loaded with all kinds of sensors, all kinds of tests that we did, we all met Ripley, you know, she's loaded with sensors so we can understand exactly all the forces that will happen on the crew as they arrive when they launch at the central station, they return home, we have the little Earthman, I hear he's going to stay on the station, so that will be for Bob and the Dr. get him back, that's really exciting. undocking of course, a little more free flight and then we came home, jettisoned the trunk, closed the nose cone and then again, like I said, just a beautiful parachute deployment, all the way we expected, all these millions of tests that we have been doing with parachutes. from the analysis and the work we've done to understand the aerodynamics of re-entry and coming home, it's all wonderful, the important thing now is that we take all this data that we've learned, we love the data, we love the data, right?

Fundamentally we are engineers and engineering driven behavior is correct, so that's what we have to do, we take all that great data and we'll apply it to the next steps, so I think what comes next is because I believe it or I'm not as excited and still shaking as I am about this return. There's a lot more to get right because our ultimate goal is to be able to continue to properly staff the space station and provide astronauts with trips to space, give them a safe place. place to be safe, a place to come home and do team rotations every six months, so how do we get there so that we've finished the demo?

A big milestone, then we take that data, apply it, learn from it and we're going to go to our in-flight abort test similar to the platform avoid test we did a few years ago, except this time we actually put the dragon the same dragon we flew ondemonstration one, we'll take it and put it on top of a falcon 9, launch it, get it going super fast, get it into test conditions and then, um, and then escape it from the rocket and again do the same thing, get it home safely on your parachutes, land in the ocean and then from there.

We finish it, we go to demo two and that's kind of like wow, that's the big prize, right? Because it will be sending Bob and Doug. You know our astronauts, our partners and our friends, sending them on a Dragon and taking them to the station. safe and home safe and sound and then once that is done we will go through the final full certification and begin those six month rotation missions that we are so excited about. You know, it's important to take a step back and think about it. everything it took to get here, all the work of all the joint NASA and Spacex teams, all the support we have received from you, friends and family, and I really think the most important thing is that on behalf of the 6 .000 people here at spacex really want to thank NASA we want to thank the international partners of the space station and thank the American public for their support and partnership as we move forward with this we are very proud to be a part of this effort thank you for being Here with us, it's early Friday morning here in Hawthorne, so for those of us who work here at Spacex we still have a full work day and obviously we've already been working on demo two for a while, although today, How was it? the demo someday, so I'm sure you'll like it.

We will continue our work on the demo for the rest of the day in meetings to start talking about the next step that we have already been working on very well. Thank you very much for being here with us, congratulations to your team also for the success of the last week. It's also really been amazing for us to be able to share the hard work of all Spacex employees with the public, so with that being said, thank you for being here. We're going to take a short break while we give you more coverage of the recovery operations that you can see are underway on your screen on the left, so stick around, we'll be back in just a couple right now, we're waiting to get some video from those teams. recovery vessels that are in the Atlantic for now, although we have another guest for today's broadcast, NASA Administrator Jim Greinstein, who is waiting at NASA headquarters in Washington DC, so I'll send it to you, Mr.

Bridenstine . Today's mission, what this means for NASA and what we have to look forward to in the future, absolutely, this is an amazing achievement in American history. In fact, I said at a press conference at four in the morning after its launch that this was the dawn of a new era in American human spaceflight and really spaceflight for the entire world thanks to all of our international partners. on the international space station, but this achievement spans many administrations, spans many NASA administrators. I want to start by thanking Mike Griffin. Who was the NASA administrator who actually launched this program during the George Bush administration, and of course Charlie Bolden was the administrator for eight years under President Barack Obama?

He kept this program strong and then of course Robert Lightfoot immediately preceded me and here we are today with this incredible achievement and the current president, President Trump, his budgets for NASA have been as strong as they have been in my lifetime. adult, so this really is an American achievement that spans many generations of NASA administrators and, in fact, you already know more than a decade of work by the NASA team, so I want to first congratulate the commercial crew program from NASA, to all the incredible engineers who have been involved from the beginning. I want to thank, of course, the incredible achievement of Spacex and their entire team and the vision of Elon Musk and what he has done to help rejuvenate this very inspiring moment for this new era in American human spaceflight.

It really is an incredible achievement for all of America, but it's not just for all of America right now, go back in time, there are so many people who deserve credit and, um, and really what's unique now is that NASA can be a customer and and I know there's a long way to go, we launched an unmanned spacecraft here, of course, we have demo two, which will be a crude spacecraft, and between now and then we have an aborted platform that we also need to test, etc. . these are all these are all capabilities that are leading to a day when we will launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil.

I heard when I was a member of Congress. I heard over and over again how we maintain consistency of purpose because we seem to move from one administration to another and change visions and budgets, how do we maintain consistency well? This is a perfect example of a program when we talk about these things that NASA does, in many cases it takes decades to achieve. This type of capability and consistency of purpose here over all these years is important, but now NASA can be a customer, we can be one of many customers for human spaceflight in what we believe will be a very strong commercial market for space operations. . and we're going to have numerous suppliers that are going to compete on cost and innovation and, of course, that's how we can do what we've seen now, where rockets are being reused, the idea that we can reuse rockets and drive them down. cost and increase access to space simply an amazing capability for our country an amazing capability for the world just as we reuse airplanes, the day will come when we will reuse rockets and space flights will become more routine, we are not there however, we have a long way to go, but this is an amazing achievement on this path towards a truly sustainable return to the moon, frankly, what is my charge that the president has given me to get us back to the moon, so To reduce the costs of low Earth orbit, we are commercializing low Earth orbit not only with launch but also eventually with space stations with human activities where NASA can be a customer for human activities in low Earth orbit and then we can use the resources of the contributors that are given to us, we can use those resources to explore, go further and return to the moon in a sustainable way, where we can stay on the moon and ultimately go to Mars, and this is a small piece in that really great vision. but this is no small piece, it is an amazing achievement in the history of the United States of America and truly exemplifies what we can accomplish when we maintain that constancy of purpose.

Alright, and thank you, admin, Jim Bridenstine, who joined us again. There, from NASA headquarters in Washington DC, we are still waiting to receive some opinions from all the recovery teams. They are still in that recovery process again. We were expecting it to be 30 minutes to an hour until they put the dragon capsule back on the ship, so before we get those transmissions, we'll quickly head over to JSC, Johnson Space Center in Houston, where we have a few more people waiting, including Steve Stitch, who is the deputy director of NASA's commercial crew program. We also have Mike Hopkins, a NASA astronaut and one of those astronauts who are already assigned to a future Dragon mission and then Mr.

Kenny Todd, he is the operations integration manager for the international space station, so guys , I will send it to you very quickly. Offer us your thoughts on how this mission is developing and what's coming in the future hey thank you dan uh hey it's great to be here representing the commercial crew program what an extraordinary day to be a part of our program you know we left our contracts in 2014 for these first missions and to sit here today and talk about demonstration one and how fantastic the flight was and what we're going to learn from it is just incredible.

I would like to congratulate the spacex team for a phenomenal job preparing the vehicles and executing the flight to all of our NASA team that worked on the mission if you only think about the enormity of what happened on this flight and all the preparation necessary to restore the platform in 39a, set up the flight control room, build the vehicles, get the falcon. 9 ready all the analysis, all the mission support that went into the sims and the practice, uh, leading up to this flight over the last year, it's just been a tremendous job. I would say one of the things we learned during this flight is the great relationship we have between the program and spacex, I would say that our teams work seamlessly with spacex, not only in the pre-flight period, but also in how we manage the flight through the dragon mission management team and then also at work. with kenny todd and the space station program uh the space station program did a phenomenal job supporting our program while we were docked to the station on the way to the station and the international partnership as well, a great opportunity for this mission, The last 24 hours have been exciting for us, you know, we battened down the hatches yesterday around noon.

We entered undocking today around 1:31 AM. m.. We made some small separations to get away from the station. If you saw that on NASA television, that was perfect. We made about three separations to get out. The station below executed the deorbitation around 6:52 a.m. central time, and then landed a few minutes ago at 7:45. The vehicle is working fine, recovery teams are on scene and have already been around the spacecraft. and made sure it was safe for staff. You may have seen one of the parachutes occur. It was a very calm day with very low sea conditions and low winds.

One of the shots landed on the dragon capsule. They already took it out. that's going very well, it'll probably take 30 minutes to maybe an hour to get it back to the ship, but then when you look at overall this mission, it was also a great dress rehearsal for the demo, we learned a ton in the pre-launch time frame about how to load the vehicle and think ahead about how we will place the crews in the vehicle you know the climb profile for this flight we practice the exact profile that mike hopkins and others will be flying very soon doug hurley and bob binkin, we have the abort system, the crew and dragon escape system actually enabled for this flight and we were able to see how it worked and we will recover the data and see those triggers and how it worked.

You know, in orbit. I got a lot of great data on the vehicle in terms of thermal performance, power performance, the vehicle actually performed better than we expected and then the encounter was phenomenal when we arrived, we checked those sensors, the link to the space station worked, the command link watching the vehicle come in and then having a really precise docking and seeing how the docking system works, it was phenomenal and then during the docking phase of course we had loading operations that will do the same thing in the demo two and then in the crew again and again. missions and then we did a robotic inspection of the vehicle to look at the thermal protection system and other systems and that went very well.

I will say one thing, this mission, you know, it only lasted six days, it was a sprint, uh from start to finish and thinking about where we've been in operations in that sprint, I think Kenny would probably tell you the same thing, it was a phenomenal job. by the team and then of course today you know the undocking, uh, seeing how those systems were executed flawlessly, it's a very tight sequence between undocking and orbit, how the nose cone performed, how it performed. ran the entry orbit, it was phenomenal, we had a riley on board a test dummy and that will give us a lot of important data for the accelerations during the acid phase and then the entry phase under the parachutes and then the landing, so we will collect that data and analyze it over the next few weeks.

We'll do a later slide. In fact, next week we will have reviews for the launch vehicle and ground segment at ksc. We'll start reviewing that and then do reviews with Spacex on the orbital phase of the mission, this flight. It really sets us up well for the rest of the year. The same vehicle that is in the water in the Atlantic today will be the in-flight abort vehicle, so one of the first things that will happen is that the vehicle will return to ksc. and go to the processing area and start refurbishing it for the in-flight abort test that should be done in the summer during the June period and then demo two vehicles at hawthorne that are being built for the first raw mission, it's on progress and going well, that work has continued throughout the flight, so it will be a very busy year forus for spacex within the onboard flight in the June period and then the demo two later in the year, with the First raw mission, I don't think we've really seen anything on the mission so far and we have to do the data reviews that, you know, would prevent us from having the raw mission at the end of this year, and then after that, you know.

It's also a very busy time in our schedule, if you look at the April period, we are preparing for Boeing's in-orbit flight test and that will happen very soon, so our schedule will transition after this mission and the data reviews to prepare not only for the in-flight abort and demonstration two, but also for the in-orbit flight test, the untreated flight test for Boeing and which will take place in April, spacecraft 3, which is the coming Boeing vehicle. together at the commercial crew processing facility in Florida and are in the middle of a series of very critical tests right now in a whole second to verify that the spacecraft can operate successfully in space and then later this year, we'll have the raw flight test for Boeing as well, so if you just look at all the commercial crew activities, it's a very busy time, in addition to this flight we did in the last few weeks, we did parachute tests for Spacex and Boeing, and If you look at all the activities to prepare to fly with our crews, it is a very exciting time, so again congratulations to our spacex team and all the NASA people around the country who worked so hard for many years on this flight, It really sets us up.

We're ready for the rest of the year and it's a super exciting time to be on the commercial crew and I'll hand it over to hopper. Thanks Steve. On behalf of the astronaut office and crew, I would also like to extend our congratulations to the Spacex team, the commercial crew team, all of NASA, and everyone who was involved in this important milestone in returning human launch capabilities. and landing on our soil. I think it's very exciting, but as you can see. In the vehicle video, the work is still going on, the recovery procedures process is still going on, and I'm personally very eager to hear how I think Ripley feels after she's taken out of the pod and put back in. new to him. recovery vehicle uh in terms of some important takeaways from a crew perspective, I think one of the things that we're really excited about this dm1 mission is that for the first time, we've been able to see an end to end. test and now we have brought together the people, the hardware and all the processes and procedures and we have been able to see how they all work together and that is very important in this as we move towards adding people. the vehicle and as Steve also said, of course we are very interested in seeing the data.

I suspect there will be some lessons learned, some improvements, some changes that we'll have to make from this, that's all part of the testing process uh in terms of what's ahead uh for the team, so for the entire team, including team dm2 bob and doug and team one, myself and victor glover and then backup team chelle lindgren, we will all be following them very closely. the in-flight abort test, as well as the procedures, the training to prepare for that dm2 mission, we also have a lot of verification tests, final verification tests that we will all be involved in, as well as test subjects for that. uh specifically for bob and doug as dm2, of course, they're going to start focusing even more on that training for the dm2 mission that they have after this mission, they have a lot less runway in front of them, so it's I'm going to start moving, I think it's going to be a lot faster for the crew, a crew, team Victor and I, and even for Chell as backup, we have a lot of training, not only for Dragon but also for Iss, our mission is.

Not just getting there and returning safely, but it's actually doing some work for the ISS program while we're there and that means we have to do all the training to be able to do the spacewalks and power to operate the arm. robotic and maintaining the station and doing that critical science that's been going on for over 18 years, it's pretty amazing, so that's what's in store for us. I guess finally I would like to emphasize that this mission is this incredible week that we have actually just a small step in this very methodical development approach that we have been going through and that the program has established that the company has established so that we can getting people on board these vehicles and getting them on and off. to the station and again congratulations to the whole team and uh for Kenny, thank you hopper and almost any conversation you have with anyone around here today will start with a congratulations, so I'll certainly offer mine to steve.

The Stitch Kathy Leaders business team program is simply a phenomenal effort. It's not easy to do what this show has had to do over the last few years and to finally see the product of that has been incredible over the last week and our friends. at spacex benji reed arty matthews the team that's there we've been working with them for the better part of a decade doing commercial cargo services and that's what we know, the team that's there is very excited about human space flight like we are and uh and their passion shows it shows every time they release a vehicle that shows every time they bring a vehicle home there's a lot of excitement around that and it's quite inspiring for a lot of us to see that kind of passion it really is great , so anyway to Benji and the Spacex team, we certainly pass on our congratulations on the space station program and we certainly hope to see you again soon, as far as milestones and things.

We had to do while Crew Dragon was on board, one of the station program things that we were really looking to do was review the interface that we installed here a couple of years ago on the front end of pma2. to ensure that our latches worked correctly when interacting with the dragon, we were able to flow power through the interface, all of that worked perfectly and therefore we feel that we are in a good position in the future to support the commercial team . program and that we have nothing else, at least on the pma front, also that we need to worry about in the future, at the end of this year we will install another docking adapter, uh up. at the node two zenith port, which will give us two ports to dock commercial crew vehicles, so we're excited to continue that activity later this year, so as far as that goes. the team I spoke to our team earlier this week and I said that probably within a week we will forget that we had a crew dragon on board just because of what's in front of us and uh and that is that we have a new team that will be joining at the end Next week, Thursday, we will see the launch of 58 Soyuz from Baikonur, so we are excited that the team is already beginning to deploy there.

The crew is there and ready to go, so we're excited to get the crew back to a six-person size again, it just gives us more flexibility, the opportunity to do more science and work on the backlog that we have on board. . So we're excited about that and one of the first things we're going to tackle as soon as we get back to a team of six is ​​a set of EVAs that we're going to call triple EVA because, it looks like it's a set of three EVAs, we're going to do three of them in about 16 days, so right after we open the hatch, we're going to be hard at work trying to put the final plans for those Evas into action. and then shortly after, we have a couple of cargo vehicles on the way, in fact, another spacex vehicle and also a Northrop Grumman cygnus, uh, it will also come on board, uh, during the month of April, so, they are happening many things again.

We are very excited about what happened this week and next week we will address some of the things that are coming, but at least today and throughout this weekend we want to celebrate this achievement with the with the with the commercial crew program and the people of uh spacex and and uh and and basking in the glow of that along with them and enjoy it, it was quite a few days here and with that, uh, we'll give it back to you, all right, thank you Kenny Mike and Steve back in Houston, thank you for those words and now we're going back into action we are getting some views of that dragon spaceship recovery the equipment is in place and now we are just waiting for exactly that to come out of the recovery ship so now that the dragon has fallen into the atlantic ocean , the recovery team will follow a series of steps as we recover the dragon spacecraft and raise it. the recovery ship now, in case you join us, real quick, you can see on your screen a live shot of the dragon recovery, the capsule floating in the sea there with the dragon team working on those recovery operations recovery in case you just join us the mission has been going very well so far today the dragon successfully landed in the atlantic ocean uh just a few minutes ago 5 45 am pacific 5 45 am so god I can't believe how late it is in morning and time flies and about 240 nautical miles from Cape Canaveral, approximately six hours before splashdown, the dragon that autonomously undocked from the international space station completed a series of exit burns, discarded its trunk section and It performed its final burn, the deorbit burn, and was placed on a trajectory toward the Atlantic Ocean. and this is actually a repeat of that final descent from a little bit earlier this morning at this point the dragon was under the two parachutes and those were responsible for all that initial deceleration and they were also responsible for taking out the main parachutes. which you can see in the replay here and those four main parachutes successfully deployed, we heard from Benji and also from the teams during the action that it went exactly as planned, everything happened exactly on the timeline too, but it all happened after Dragon successfully revived. entered the earth's atmosphere and those parachutes deployed and now, although we are at the final part of the dragon's journey, as very soon it will be lifted out of the water and placed in the recovery boat, again, this is a repeat of the re -entry and splashdown which we witnessed live several minutes ago beautiful photo of those lovely filled parachutes as they are slowing the dragon capsule towards the Atlantic Ocean yes it's already been 45 minutes since it happened wow it feels like it was five minutes ago Yes, that's it.

That landing was at 5:45 a.m. m. Pacific 8 45 a. m., so a little bit later in the morning there on the east coast, uh, when the dragons splashed down again, yeah, about 200 stat or nautical miles from Port Canaveral, if you've been following along with our mission this week, You already know that we don't have real humans on board, just our anthropomorphic test device. It has many sensors placed around the body. I guess you would say that inside the suit there is also a microphone inside, yes. This will give us a lot of really interesting data about the G-forces and what the test device experienced during launch, docking and re-entry;

However, as with all steps so far in our demonstration mission, our teams will cover the full steps in the recovery process as if it were a truly raw mission to prepare for our first time with Nastra with NASA astronauts on board. As you saw before, the fast recovery boats went very quickly to the landing point. Go to the seeker, the main recovery ship followed. quickly, which you can see on your screen right now, um, it's a perfect day, so it's pretty cool, so we'll be watching as the recovery vessel approaches the dragon capsule and we'll be able to see. was pulled out of the ocean, that's a beautiful photo, so our recovery team has already been doing the safety checks that they do after splashdown, the vehicle was saved and as soon as they detected that it was in the water and the team They made sure it was safe to approach the dragon spacecraft and then upon immediate detection of the landing, the dragon automatically released all of those main parachutes and that simply prevents the wind from catching them and potentially pulling or dragging the spacecraft through the water. . and those parachutes are also recovered, another of the fast approach ships was assigned the task that, immediately after splashdown, after that success, the successful parachute cut dragon automatically saves any of the pyrotechnics still present on the vehicle and can also automatically perform a couple of additional attacks. minor system configurations, uh, the astronauts, if they were on board, would remain seated, so Ripley obviously hasn'traised right now on the boat, but the seat has not been unbuckled yet, the astronauts, if they were on board, would remain seated and They are left in their suits at this point, but the Dragon spacecraft has air Onboard conditioning that helps keep temperatures under control inside the spacecraft and the onboard communication system also remains on, so the crew still has two-way communication as they simply sit in the capsule waiting for teams to come in. and put them on the ship.

If I were an astronaut inside the capsule right now, I would imagine this point would be like when you're going through a car wash. you know you are you are safe you can talk you can you are comfortable in your closed environment but you can't open the door there is still a lot of water yes, now it will take a little over 10 minutes for the recovery to complete their safety checks and they completed their preparation activities and right now, as we can see, they are making progress on being able to lift the dragon and place it in the recovery container as part of the preparation for this lift that we saw earlier. a member of the recovery team, but an actual member of the recovery team, he actually climbed to the top of the capsule and that was to hold the dragon's lift rings and connect the lift line, so he would probably comply with many physical requirements for that particular role.

If I couldn't do it I would most likely fall, but it's really cool to be able to see our recovery team who's been practicing live here with these beautiful shots of the Atlantic Ocean, so for now we're just going to continue to get these great ones. views from the boats. This view is actually from one of the other vessels that traveled to the recovery area. This is from the Go browser and the combined NASA teams with various managers, flight doctors and other staff. that will be involved in the kind of game day operations when we have a crew aboard the spacecraft, they are moving, navigator as we mentioned before, the ship that you see there is fully equipped for medical checks if we had the astronauts aboard the Dragon today, as soon as they come out the side hatch, they will take them to the medical quarters and give them a medical examination just to make sure that everything is okay and that everyone is in good health.

Additionally, there is a helicopter pad above. Due to unpredictable sea conditions each time we land, it can take a couple of days for the crew to depart and return from the landing point, so the ship is also capable of housing the recovery crew for a couple of weeks of Realistically, if it is absolutely necessary, obviously, a long time. In my opinion, it's time to be on a boat, but it's fully equipped and I've been on that boat myself and it's just amazing to me as someone who keeps my eyes up to the sky and not necessarily, you know, the ocean water. .

It's just amazing to me that we can have a boat like this in our fleet. When you think about the complete encapsulation of what a mission requires, it's not just about getting up, but also about getting back to the ground safely. and this ship is a great example of how we can do that and as mentioned a moment ago, this is actually a view from the go navigator, which is one of two ships that have traveled to the splashdown area. One of the NASA staff members on board that ship is Shane Kimbrough and he's actually the leader of all of NASA's recovery teams and pretty much responsible for overseeing all of the crew's needs and all of their recovery, all of the quarantine before launch.

He likes to say that I. I think he told us that they belong to him once they're quarantined and getting ready, so he's actually joining us now via satellite phone from that ship. Shane, thanks for calling very quickly. How is everything going with Dragon? recovery Hi, great talking to you from the Go browser, everything is going very well, it was beautiful to see him arrive with the drugs and then the main parachutes and then obviously the splashdown. uh they're probably watching the video now that the ghost finder is. I'm pretty close to getting the castle up on deck, so Shane, what was the trip there?

I know we're at a landing zone a little further away than when we have crew on board, but what does it all look like? So far everything has been great, the crew is taking very good care of us, it was about a 30 hour trip to get here to the splashdown area, but we woke up this morning knowing that we were only a couple of hours away from the entire action that was happening. That was really cool and now it's cool to be involved in bringing back the demo that is. It was amazing to hear. It was one thing for us to be able to see it from mission control.

What was it like to see the dragon fall with your own eyes? Shane. Absolutely incredible. Everyone, there's a lot of excitement building on the ship, you know, for 30 minutes. or so before the entrance and then once you know one person saw the drugs open up, everyone's shouting and pointing and everyone's excited, it was really cool, and from my perspective it looks absolutely perfect, I'm not sure about what the date will show. otherwise, but it looked really amazing, we have a beautiful day here, very quiet cds and a good combination for better weather, so shane, obviously you didn't get down in this capsule today, but you got off in a castle, but on land What is this experience? being on the ocean has been like, how does that really compare to when you landed in Kazakhstan?

Yeah, good question as we're sitting here talking, it's been 45 50 minutes and the splashdown and I'm thinking you know what a crew is on. there and there's a long time to wait for them to be picked up, so we'll adjust that schedule a little bit knowing that the crew probably won't be feeling very well right now and the sooner we can get them home and pick them up. Being on deck and then eventually returning to land will help your recovery process, so we'll continue to get these views of what's in store for you and the rest of the teams.

I know they said it would be about 30 minutes. or a 30 hour boat ride back to port, yes it will probably be about the same when you return. I think we'll be here for another hour, so maybe two hours to locate everything on the Spacex team in the search engine once we get it. Come on, then we'll start coming and going and we're supposed to arrive late Saturday night back to Port Canaveral. Okay, Shane, we'll let you go back to observing all the operations. I know you have a job to do. to talk to us, but I really appreciate you calling from the Atlantic, it was a great splashdown and we'll see you when you get back to Houston.

Sounds great, thanks everyone and enjoy the rest of the scenes. here, while you're getting them from the go browser, be careful, and again, that was NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, he's outside with the NASA teams who are on a boat watching the ghost finder get a little bit closer . It seems that very soon they will. We're going to start winding that dragon and we're going to see it go up to the dragon's nest, so you saw a couple of seconds ago the shot on your screen of the back of the ship, um, that's the cradle that you saw. that's what we've been referring to as the nest is designed specifically for the crew dragon design and that's exactly where once the lift arms have lifted the capsule out of the water and will place it back in that spot and then It's basically where, if there were astronauts on board, that's the position they would exit the castle.

It seems we are getting closer and closer to the capsule. It should be in scope as soon as we've talked about it. It's expected to be about an hour or a little less after landing for the capsule to get back on the ship and as you heard Shane talk about, you really just want to try to get the crew out of there and into a more stable place. environment as quickly as possible and then you can start taking the ship and start heading back to port and if you miss some of the data earlier in the program, they're just over 200 nautical miles out to sea right now, so we're listening that it will take them about 30 hours to return once we have crew on board, that will not be the case, they will be much closer to land within about 20 or 24 nautical miles, so it gives you the option to quickly return to shore in only a couple of hours, but as you pointed out above, there's a helipad on that ship, so if for some reason they needed to get the crew back much quicker, they could actually transport them by air. get them out and then bring them back to dry land there in Florida, but the gap that continues to close sounds like operations are definitely picking up here at Spacex headquarters if you're starting to hear any of that, but everything looks great so far , we should have that. dragon on the boat in a moment, so we will continue to observe the recovery of the dragon at this point, the teams have already lowered the boat's hydraulic lifting mechanism into the water as they prepare to take that dragon spacecraft to The translation system in cover that Spacex decided to call a nest and the dragon will remain in that nest during its return trip to the coast where it will arrive in Port Canaveral, Florida, and we expect this to take approximately 30 hours.

On the mission, it will take them that long to return because they are just over 200 nautical miles out to sea, but for difficult missions, as we have said, the landing zone will only be a couple of hours travel from the port. and that's so Spacex can quickly ferry returning astronauts to dry land, where things are a bit stable and after you've been in microgravity for about six months, your feet will probably appreciate that, very soon, the capsule will lift off . and they will place it in that nest and then they will center and orient the vehicle and then the dragon will eventually be transloaded and moved to the hangar aboard the ship so that the teams can open the hatch and for missions with astronauts on board we are almost at the point where the recovery team would be helping the crew get off the dragon, so we're almost there, that would happen shortly after they get back to the ship.

In aerospace terms, we call it the departure of the spaceship crew and under typical circumstances, our Spacex recovery team will help the dragon crew within an hour after landing, yes, so you can see on your screen that the dragon is getting closer and closer to the rear of the recovery turn to the recovery ship, just a minute. A day or two ago we saw the crew member who was responsible for putting all the appropriate rigging on the boat jump out of the capsule and get back into the water and right now we are waiting for the dragon to get up and come out of the water towards the nest there goes to them being in front of us is 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 come out the top hatch is what we use to connect. the ISS and which is currently hidden under the nose cone, but as we said, the astronauts will exit through the side hatch and we got a beautiful photo there, now the hydraulic elevator is coming back towards us and is preparing to lower the dragon capsule. in its nest as we said, we are treating this demonstration mission with the recovery operations as if there were real astronauts on board and of course before we could open the hatch, we would have to make sure that the cabin pressure of the ship space is evened out with the outside environment before doing so once the dragon is seated and you can hear some tears behind me as the remaining people we have here on the spacex team outside of mission control are applauding with the placement of the dragon in the nest there like You can see you can also notice that the thermal protection system that we have on the outside of the dragon if you were looking during the launch was a pristine white of course upon re-entry as we mentioned before there was plasma of course , since he came back in. came in through the Earth's atmosphere, so we've got a beautiful toasted marshmallow there sitting in the nest of our recovery ship, uh, which is, I think it's such a cool sight now that we're, we're taking the dragon down and we're obviously recovering our rockets uh and it's really cool to see the evidence of the return to Earth is really wonderful yeah and we had fantastic luck with the weather today the sea states were relatively calm by all accounts just a couple of clouds splashing the sky.

We had great views of the dragon under its parachutes, even before the parachutes we saw, just after that entry interface and we got some really interesting views from the wb 57 plane, but with the dragon back on the ship, that's it for we. We're right at the end of this mission, so at this point, as we talked about, the recovery personnel would help theastronauts to leave the Dragon and those medical teams would be waiting and there are medical evaluation rooms on board, but there are no people on board. The Ripley board won't need a medical exam, but they will get all the data from the sensors placed around Ripley on that anthropomorphic test device on board as they get all the different G-forces that the dragon was exposed to the sound environment.

Everything the crew would experience, Ripley just experienced, but this mission started about six days ago. With that early morning launch on March 2, we had a successful approach and docking to the International Space Station did all the demonstrations expected for the mission. Docked for the past five days, they tested the dragons' power and communication systems with the space station, unloading about 400 pounds of cargo, and loading 300 pounds of cargo again. We had that undocking just a couple of hours ago as a successful re-entry four large parachutes and a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at 8:45 AM. Eastern time, 5:45 a.m. m. for us here on the Pacific coast, so it was really a fantastic mission.

It has been a great honor for me to be here at Hawthorne to share this with everyone. and to share it with my spacex colleagues here, a successful mission, the first successful test flight of NASA's commercial crew program to the international space station, so, as dan said, it's been an incredible honor to share this mission with the public, all the teams are incredibly and I am delighted with the success of this demonstration mission which, of course, paves the way for our first raw flight later this year. Be sure to follow Spacex and NASA on our social media channels for updates and next steps on the commercial crew program until next time.

So do you do it?