Dragon arrival configuration is complete. All valves appear closed visually now. Arrival configuration complete. Houston copies. Never, welcome to the International Space station. Please come aboard. Endeavor copies. We will be there in a second. We have bob behnken entering the International Space station. Followed by doug hurley. [applause] houston, we see you. It is a great looking photograph. Standby. We will call you when we are ready in the next few seconds. Got a bunch of happy and grateful people making their way in right now. Demo two crew now entering the International Space station. They entered at 12 22 p. M. Central time. They are over turkmenistan. The crew gathered in front of the cameras at node two just behind the hatchway to the crew dragon. We are standing by for a welcome ceremony. We will have vips in Mission Control houston ready to greet the crew. Station, were just about ready. Stand by. Station, it is houston. Confirm that you are ready for the event. Houston, this is station. We are ready for the event. Copy that. Administrator bridenstine, welcome to mcc. This is the nasa administrator, can you hear me . We hear you loud and clear, sir. Welcome to the space station. Thank you, chris, it is good to see you. Welcome to bob and doug. The whole world saw this mission and we are so, so proud of everything you have done for our country and in fact to inspire the world. We sure appreciate that, sir. It has been our honor to be just a small part of this. We have to give credit to spacex, the commercial crew program, and of course, nasa. It is great to get the United States back in the crewed launch business and we are glad to be on board magnificent complex. We have some vips here and i am sure they have some questions to ask you, but i have one of my own before i turn it over. I want to find out if you guys got any sleep on your way up there in the last 19 hours. Did you guys get any sleep . A lot of folks in hawthorne were asking the same question, sir. We did get probably a good seven hours or so opportunity for sleep. I did sleep and doug did as well. The first night is always a challenge, but the dragon was a slick vehicle and we had good airflow. Just excited to be back in lowearth orbit again. Amazing. One of the people here with us today is senator ted cruz. He is a huge advocate of americas space program. He has been somebody who has helped us so much as we transition from one administration to the next administration. The reason missions like this can have success is because of continuity of purpose. Senator ted cruz was a leader on a bill called the nasa transition authorization act. Because of that, we have had a lot of Political Support and we are grateful for his leadership. Senator cruz, would you like to say a few words . Sen. Cruz congratulations, gentlemen. The eyes of the world are upon you and everyone is proud of you. All of america is watching you. And today and yesterday represent big, big days. We are looking at a decade since we have had american astronauts launched on an American Ship from american soil. I can tell you that i sat with my wife and kids yesterday watching on tv. I suspect what we did is just about what everyone did, which was held our breath as it took off. We are glad to see you landed safely. We are glad to see you have docked. Let me ask. That dragon is an amazing vehicle. How does she handle . It flew just like it was supposed to. We had a couple opportunities to take it out for a spin, so to speak, after we got into orbit last night and again today before we docked. My compliments to the folks back at hawthorne and spacex for how well it flew. It is exactly like the simulator. We cannot be happier about the performance of the vehicle. Sen. Cruz what do you guys hope to accomplish in your time on the International Space station . While we are on board, of course with the new spacecraft, we hope to put her through her paces. The good ship endeavor is going to get a lot of check out over the next week or two here, and hopefully we will be able to declare her operational. Doug and i will be able to take some burden off chris and his crewmates, ivan and anatoly, so we can keep the station operating at its peak possibilities. Like i said, trying to keep the space station as productive as possible. Sen. Cruz as a country, we are in the midst of a tough week. We are seeing protests, anger, violence. I have to say, this launch and yalls docking is a powerful inspiration of what we can do when we come together. The power of unity, the power of ingenuity. The last question i would ask you is, since you have the opportunity to address particularly the young people in america, what would you tell them in terms of what we can do when we come together . That is a great question. Nine years ago, just about exactly nine years ago, we docked with atlantis on the last flight of the Space Shuttle program, a 30year program. Folks at spacex, at nasa, the commercial crew program put their Heads Together and worked diligently year after year, making sacrifices and working hard, and nine years later american launch capability was restored. This is just one effort that we can show for the ages in this dark time we have had over the past several months to kind of inspire, especially the young people in the United States, to reach for these lofty goals and work hard and look what you can accomplish. Sen. Cruz thank you, gentlemen. God bless you. We have another guest here we have another guest here that represents the Johnson Space center. It is my good friend from the house of representatives, dr. Brian babin. He was a big part of the nasa transition authorization act. Here is the representative from texas. Great to be with you guys. I was at the launch yesterday. I want to say a huge congratulations. There was a thunderstorm that blew in about 45 minutes or so before liftoff. It was in doubt there for a minute, but it was an enormous achievement. I want to say thank you for you guys. Really appreciate what youre doing for america. The crew that has already been up there, chris and your fellow russians, i want to give you a great big thank you as well. I have a son who is a navy seal and i want you to be thanked for your service there too, chris. I know you have said that the craft, the dragon handled very well, but i want to see how it compares with the Space Shuttle. If one of you would address that, i would appreciate it. Thank you, sir. It certainly has been a long endeavor for us and our namesake spacecraft. We are proud to have her on board the International Space station after all the teams around the country and across america have done to get us here today. As far as a comparison with the Space Shuttle, both doug and i took a few minutes while we are were accomplishing the approach and docking to talk a little bit about it. We were surprised at how smooth things were off the pad. The Space Shuttle is a pretty rough riders heading into orbit with the solid rocket boosters. Our expectation was that as we continued with the flight into second stage that things would get a lot smoother than the Space Shuttle did, but dragon was huffing and puffing all the way into orbit and we were definitely writing a dragon all the way up. It was not the smooth ride as the Space Shuttle was. A little bit less gs, but more alive. Anything else, doug . Bob, what is meco . I have to apologize for using the term meco . It is confusing between the Space Shuttle and the dragon vehicle. It stands for midengine cutoff. For the Space Shuttle, it is all the way in orbit. For the single engine cutoff, when we achieved orbit. That time for the single engine under dragon, with one engine, was more of an experience then the shuttle was for that 6. 5 minutes or so when we were under that second stage motor. Doug, did you want to add . I met your mother and father yesterday, doug. Great folks. They were very proud of their son. That is pretty cool. Hopefully they enjoyed the launch. I know for parents it can probably be pretty nerveracking for them to experience a launch. This was their third, so i am glad everything went ok and hopefully it was a good show. We have not heard or seen any video yet, but we are looking forward to seeing the launch replayed sometime. I can assure you that it was a great show. It was one of the treats of my lifetime, i have to say. Many of the other folks were sitting there looking across the country. Even the world. I can tell you, as senator cruz said, we have gone through some rough times over the last few days. To have that successful launch for the Publicprivate Partnership between nasa and spacex, and you guys being so welltrained and having it go off without a hitch, was a tremendous blessing for our country. I cannot tell you how many emails and communications i have gotten from people who are so disturbed by what has been transpiring around the country to have the great news, the wonderful liftoff and everything going off without a hitch. I want to say god bless both of you. Thank you so very much. Bless the rest of you as well. We thank our russian partners. Thank you, chris. We look forward to seeing you successfully complete your mission and get back safely on earth. God bless. Thank you very much. Just so you guys are aware, this show was in fact spectacular. The ratings on nasa tv beat everyone else. Not just some of them. All of them. And that includes it turned number one on twitter. It was the number one talked about thing on social media in general. This was an amazing moment. It represents a transition and how we do spaceflight from the United States. Nasa is not going to purchase, own, and operate rockets and capsules the way we used to. We will partner with commercial industry for access to lowearth orbit. Those partnerships will enable our providers to get customers that are not nasa and drive down our costs. We will have numerous providers competing on cost and innovation and safety. We will have more access to lowearth orbit than ever before. This new business model, now that it has been proven on commercial resupply of the iss and now crew. When we go to the moon, it will be done because of the great people here at the Johnson Space center and so many other places across the United States. We go to the moon, we will land on the surface with commercial landers. We are very proud of the commercial Lunar Payload Service program being run here out of the Johnson Center as well so that we can take small payloads to the surface of the moon. All of this is leading up to an amazing day where we have humans living and working for long periods of time on the surface of the moon, but doing it with a purpose. That purpose, of course, is to go to mars. Humanity is going to explore more and to be able to go further than ever before because of the Publicprivate Partnerships. We all know that if the government is creating the demand and the government is crating the supply we will always be limited. But when we have partners who are interested in exploring commercially and doing the things that are necessary to get capital investment, then we will all end up better. I want to say the whole world saw this. This is a new era in human spaceflight and we are grateful for the service of not just our two astronauts who embarked on this mission, but the thousands of the people involved, everything from the suppliers to the contractors to the nasa team to the spacex team. What an amazing day for the country and world. I will turn it over to my deputy. Gentlemen, congratulations. Jim has mentioned going to the moon. Yesterday and today, you have inspired the artemis generation, which is our next generation. That is what this is about. It is really bringing the children we have got and our grandchildren forward so that they will be the ones going into deep space. This is a dawn of a new era. We thank you for being at the beginning of it. Thank you so much. It was absolutely our pleasure, but it is just a huge team effort across the board from spacex to nasa they made this all happened. We were just the lucky guys they got to fly the rocket yesterday. I have a question for chris cassidy. Our crew here decided to be about three days late. You have to work them over time, i presume, to get them caught up in all the activities they missed out on. Any plans for them . Well, they missed out on a good one for them to skip. It was saturday housecleaning, but i took care of it for them. In all seriousness, we have a few things to take care of tonight to make sure we are all safe and nothing bad happens. Then we are looking forward to some operational stuff later in the month. Maybe we will get outside and do some spacewalks. So we are all super excited to have kurt two more crewmates. Here in houston, this is the home of the astronaut office. The Johnson Space center is led by mark geyer. I will turn it over to mark for a few comments. Thank you, jim. Great to see you, bob and doug. You look a little taller than i remember you. I also want to thank and natalie thank i natalie thank anatoly and ivan. I also like this visual of our international partnership. We have had a tremendous partnership with russcosmos and will continue to do so. It is nice to see crew arrived from this side of the space station. That was pretty cool after nine years. I did have one question for chris, though. What might you do to ensure bob and doug stay longer . Do you have any strategy there . Well, we will slow down the rate at which i am eating food. Maybe we can stretch out our consumables a little bit, but that is a great question. We will have to come up with some conniving scheme here in the next few days. Great. Look forward to greeting the three of you eventually back in ellington after your work is complete. Thank you. Of course, mark geyer has an amazing deputy. If you would like to come and say a few words. Thank you, jim. Hi, guys. You look really good. I want to say on behalf of everybody here, we want to say thank you. It was an amazing launch and we love seeing the docking. You guys all look really good. Thank you for all that you are doing, and we cannot wait for you to research to return, but not too soon. The station was to get you a lot of work done. God bless. Thank you, vanessa. We appreciate that. We also have with us the associate administrator for the agency. That is the chief operating officer of the agency. He also ran the flight readiness review for this mission. He did an amazing job. I cannot say enough about his leadership at the agency. Steve, if you would like to say a few words, ask a few questions. Hey, guys. It is great to see you all. I cannot tell you my adrenaline shut down when you guys opened the hatch. I have been on edge ever since yesterday. I cannot tell you how great it has been to see you on station. It has been a team effort. I felt like the last two years i have been part of the team, working through issues. It has been a heck of a year and a half. We had demo one, and the flight abort test, working through things like parachutes and the escape system and i could not be more proud of the team forgetting to this point. It has been amazing and you have obviously been part of that. I appreciate you showing up in washington, d. C. At our reviews. You guys are the risktakers. Making sure you are ok with where we are and where you are headed. I appreciate your active participation. I could not be more proud of the team. Congratulations and it is awesome to see you guys on station. Well, thank you, sir. We are just proud to be part of the team that got to bring spaceflight back to the florida coast. I appreciated the comment earlier that it was nice to see a vehicle come to the forward portion of the space station. I will tell you that is the only way doug and i know how to do it. Thank you for the team for providing it our way. We appreciate that. Doug and bob, i am being given the wrap signal. Doug, did you have something to say before we wrap it up here . No sir. We are just happy to be here. Chris is going to put us to work. Hopefully we will fit in and not mess too many things up. I have no doubt you will do amazing work. The president and the Vice President came to the launch. We have members of congress and the senate from both sides of the aisle. This was an amazing moment of unity for the nation. It was an amazing moment for the whole world to look up in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and other challenges. We were able to have this very, very special moment where we could all look at the future and say that things are going to be brighter tomorrow than they are today and you and the nasa team and the spacex team gave us that opportunity. For that, we are so, so grateful. I would be remiss as the nasa administrator if i did not promote what comes next. And of course this is the beginning. We are launching into lowearth orbit again, but soon we will be going to the moon. We will be going sustainably with commercial and international partners. We will be using the resources of the moon to learn how to live and work for long periods of time. Ultimately, we will take all of that knowledge and go to mars. When we go to the moon, we go with a diverse, highly qualified astronaut corps, which includes women, which is why we call the program artemis, named after the twin sister of apollo, and greek mythology the goddess of the moon. I am glad that our representatives at the Johnson Space center are here because we are going to be asking them to fund this project. Why an amazing day you guys have given us, so thank you, thank you, thank you, from the United States of america and people all around the world. I am more popular on twitter then i have ever been and it is because of you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Just hold your position for a few minutes. There are a number of photos we would like to take. A note for those down here in the room. Senator cruz and director geyer and all our distinguished visitors, thank you for your participation in this historic event and the leadership that has enabled it. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] a few hours after the docking and welcoming, nasa officials led a briefing from the Johnson Space center in houston