Transcripts For CSPAN NASA TV Coverage Of SpaceX Crew Dragon Return To Earth 20240712

[no audio] we are still following along with bob and dougs journey home today. Smoothlyg continuing with the departure of dragon from the spaced station space station. They are awake. Everything is coming up in about three hours. We have a never things that will be happening. We are looking for our event to begin in three hours and 42 minutes. Have a separating of the trunk. That is claw separation. The clod delivers power and theds between the trunk claw delivers power and fluids between the trunk and the capsule. We will jettison the trunk. Atmospherenter the and disintegrate during that process. The dragon capsule will be in its final physical form prior to reentry. We will then initiate a deorbit burn. It will last about 11. 5 minutes. That is designed to place dragon on its final trajectory to its landing site, which is off the coast of florida, near pensacola. Once that happens, bob and doug will then sit back and continue to monitor all the telemetry and data they have on their screens. Their primary mission for today is to just keep a tap on things. You can see on your screen that they are not in their suits yet. It will be longer yet before they have to don their suits. They are moving about in crew dragon. They will perform that deorbit burn, lining up the capsule for that final reentry and it splashed down off the coast of florida and splashdown off the coast of florida. It will utilize the four forward thrusters. We will not need to use them. For the remainder of the mission, and we want to protect that forward hatch, the hatch used for ingress and egress, or entering and exiting the space station. We definitely want to protect that hatch, so we close and lock that nosecone, and then after the nosecone is in place and we confirm that it is locked up, we maneuver to that deorbit burn excuse me, the nosecone will close, and then we will then begin the process of reentering the earths atmosphere. We just saw bobbitt restowing his we just saw bob restowing his spacesuit. Toer they are able successfully rinse or the earth sadness fear, we will get out of comms blackout. Out, duringill come the initial slowing and stabilization, followed by the four main parachutes, around 11 a. M. Pacific. Splashdowns up for a across the coast of florida near pensacola. 18 40 universal time. To meet them will be the crew of the navigator, which has left port. Some live views of the boat itself as it continues to make its way to the recovery zone. It was able to leave the poor around 9 20 a. M. Eastern this morning. Issue withracking an one of the backup generators on board the go navigator. They were trying to get a replacement for that, but were unable to get that on board in time. Go navigator still has a functional generator on board, and not having that backup is not any constraint on normal Recovery Options this morning. Speedigator steaming full ahead heading to that recovery zone. They will be there several hours before splashdown. They will maintain a distance of about three nautical miles from the anticipated splashdown point and will standby for wind bob whenoug four w for bob and doug are in the water. Trying to determine where exactly where were going to point dragon for its return home. For multiplellow excuse me, in order to allow timesltiple departure from the International Space station, so, again, trying to line up things like sleep eather, weand w identified seven potential splashdown locations, four on the west coast of florida and three on the east coast. It has been priority number one for the Recovery Team to determine which of those seven locations bob and doug would be splashing down at. The weather around florida is everchanging, especially when you have something like, as we currently do, a Tropical Storm rolling through the area. Having that storm roll up the east coast of florida prevented us, obviously, from being able to land at any of those. The selection was narrowed down to the four on the west coast of florida. We continue to evaluate the wether at designated continued to evaluate the weather at designated intervals and determined the best place for recovery would be off pensacola. Requirements are essentially that they cannot be in the middle of the body of water. Blending zone has to be close to a medical facility and to the landing zone has to be close to a medical facility and close to a port. We have continued to watch the weather. We got pretty lucky with the weather we are looking at today. We had some weather criteria that we are looking for. We have to meet those criteria in order to get go conditions the splashdown two splashdown to splashdown. Wind is barely over one mile an hour right now in the splashdown zone. It should be a stable operation for this recovery today. We just locked in panama city a few hours ago. Kind of our last chance toilet lock in an alternate site was our last chance to lock in an alternate site was a little over half an hour ago. It has the capability to change sites in free flight, and we have seven different locations, just based off the weather and every thing else we looked at. Panama city was chosen as the alternate. It was already looking like our best based on the weather and they locked that in a few hours ago. Everything continuing on track for this pensacola splashdown. Itsgo navigator is well on way to the location, and they are just a couple hours away from that deorbit burn. We are taking your questions from twitter. Be sure to use the asknasa. This question comes from tim. What is the current distance to the iss . Good question. Something i find people often assume is that the International Space station is really far away. It is actually not. It is about 250 to 300 miles above earth. I think when i saw a report earlier, or maybe it was leah who mentioned it, it was about 263 miles above the surface of the earth right now. Depending on where it is in its orbit, it might be higher or lower. So, yeah, it is actually not that far away. It is basically the distance from los angeles to San Francisco as the crow flies, just above us. It is not as far as many people think. Again, this is using the asknasa. This comes from nicholas. How far off the coast will the capsule land . Fully be possible to see any of the action from the coast will it be possible to see any of the action from the coastline . It varies. We stay far enough away that you would not be able to see it from the coast. You want to be coming down far downarea from land in an area far from land, as you do have to clear air zones, make sure you have notices going out to ships not to go into a certain area. Kilometers orral miles offshore. The cape is the closest one, about 20 miles offshore. Anywhere to 50om miles to about 200. Where we landed last year was about 240 miles up the cape. It is different depending on where you are going, but one of the things we have in our recovery arsenal our helicopters, where bob and doug will get recovered by the go navigator, the main recovery vessel, and then a helicopter will land on the deck. Minutenly about a 10 helicopter ride from the go navigator to pensacola, where they will move onto a nasa plane ready to take them to houston. One thing to note. Thecapsule will be entering atmosphere, and we will have parachutes starting in about of000 feet above the gulf mexico. Spacex timeline and recovery status update. Update to the current now. To the crew now. Go ahead. Update, wea timeline are now within four point five hours of splashdown for Contingency Planning purposes. Copy. 4. 5 for splashdown. Copy. Believe jayery, i told you we were working a backup generator on the vessel. We were unable to get that aboard before go navigator had to depart due to timing constraints. It is expected to be on site at approximately 1700 utc. Ok. Go navigator will be on site for splashdown. Good read back. As jay mentioned before, we are down to one generator due to the loss of the other one. We copy. That was a quick update, giving the crew on board dragon the latest. As you heard, go navigator on its way. Expected to be in the splashdown zone on time. 1840 universalat time. They talked through the generator issue. This fully equipped morning, but they are down one of the generators on board. Still able to use the hydraulic lift to get dragon out of the water and on board. The ship has a full deck area, where has it a frame on the back of the ship. We will get some full views. Is typically used to lift dragon out of the water onto the deck. The crew stays in their suits the entire time they are in the water. They will get picked out of the water and put onto the dragons nest the dragons nest onto the boat. Going back to the twitter question we had a minute ago, if it would actually be available to view from onshore, i did a little bit of slough thing a uthing, i think if youre in the pensacola area, you may be able to spot the parachute deployment. They are deployed around 6000 feet above the earths surface. The parachutes will deploy. It takes about a minute for them to fully deploy out into their larger state. If youossible, i think, are in pensacola and you have keen eyes, you might be able to spot parachutes in the distance. The capsule from that distance would be pretty small, so no promises, but it might be worth a look. If you are in pensacola, take a look south around 11 48 a. M. 18 48 universal. It is what we call an ascending approach. It will be heading towards you from the south. Will be moving southeast southwest to northeast across the gulf of mexico as it makes its approach. There are also descending orbits, essentially when dragon is traveling from the northwest to the southeast, which would bring it over the u. S. Before it splashed down. We are ascending today, so it will largely be over the gulf of mexico the whole way in. Again, we are taking your questions through twitter this morning. Use the asknasa. We will try to get as many as we can. The next comes from andrew. He asks interior. Go for spacex. Mike, could you take the interior cameras down for a few minutes . In work. The crew just making a quick ask, having those interior cameras brought down. They have cameras so they are able to get Rapid Response to any questions they may have come in the help they need they need, buthelp they giving the astronauts privacy. Back to this question from andrew. Why cannot dragon make a straight downward dissent instead of orbiting around the world . You have to keep in mind that when dragon is in the International Space station, it is the same velocity. It is going 7500 Miles Per Hour and it is orbiting the earth. In orderfor habit to have it performa landing straight down, you would need some sort of force to stop it going that fast. That is not really possible due to constraints like fuel and the size of the capsule and all that good stuff. Spacex, we should be external cameras at this time. Thanks. There was that confirmation from spacex core that the internal cabin cameras have been shut off. Bedragons reentry cannot straight down because he would need some sort of force in order to stop it thanks to newtons second law. That being said, in orbital anntry like we do use orbital reentry like we do use is highly calculable. We can have details about where it is going to land and at what time. So there is really no downside to doing it in the way that we do do it other than from the fact that, from a physics standpoint, the straight down approach is not really possible. Our next question from elaine. On theifference is there route map between the red and yellow lines . That is where you that is showing you where dragon is in sunlight or indiana clips or in an eclipse. Whereine in the orbit is it is in sunlight the yellow line in the orbit is where it is in sunlight. I think is up here in california. There are not many windows. That is all that line is signaling. He might wonder why there are two lines. It is actually one continuous line. Dragon is in the top right portion of your screen right now. The icon is currently to the north of india, over china. It will pass over southeast asia. Head is about to head into and orbital nighttime it is about to head into an orbital nighttime. It is about to cross what is known as the terminator line , the line between night and day on the earths surface. You can get some pretty spectacular views as the earth goes from night to almost pitch black beneath you. One of my favorite views we get from the National Space station is as they are transitioning from day to night and night today. You get to see the sunrise and sunset from their perspective. I absolutely love it when we get to see the lightning as well. It is such a cool phenomenon to view from above. Fewe will hang out for a minutes here and watch dragons track as they continue to circle the globe. We are still about three hours away from things really starting to pick up once we get into trunk separation. We will stick with it as we continue to get ready to welcome bob and doug home later this morning. Audio] if youre just now tuning in, we are still following bob and home at theey back conclusion of our demo two mission. Everything started back on saturday when they made their way into the dragon spacecraft. They had been on board the International Space station for about 62 days. Willthey splashed down, it be just shy of 64 days spent in space bob and doug made their way into the spacecraft, closing the hatch on their side. They were able to get the hatch closed on the station side, with a docking target affixed to it. That created an area between the two known as the vestibule. That gets exposed to the vacuum of space following undocking. We first have to depressurized it, draw the air out. After that and some leak checks are completed, the crew gets ready for their actual departure from the International Space station. The teams on the ground in hawthorne and Mission Control, houston, did go no go, getting them ready for departure. Forowing a successful go undocking, it is time to move dragon away. The docking command was sent, and about five minutes ago, the dragon fired its thrusters, two small bursts, to separate itself from the International Space station. Did four evening, it departure burns to bring it over and above the International Space station. All of those burns done successfully. Openingpoint, dragons away from the station got larger and larger until it was time to move into its departure phase burn. Long burn six minute to finetune dragons path to its eventual splashdown site. That was completed last night after bob and doug had gone to sleep. Once that was in the book, we only have one more coming down the line. We were going to get ready for this reentry. Bob endo did have about an eight hours sleep period. Tois a bout a six hour trip the ocean off the coast of pensacola, florida. They woke up a couple hours ago. More dynamic action is about to pick up soon. Coming up next will be the claw and trunk separation. When we separate the trunk, it will be the finally physical form of dragons two reentry. The capsulese after jettisoning that trunk. Dragon is on its final trajectory to the landing site off the coast of florida in the gulf of mexico. That deorbit burn will last about 11. 5 minutes. After that deorbit burn completes, we then close the nosecone. The deorbit berm will utilize the four thrusters at the top of dragon burn will utilize the four thrusters at the top of dragon. We went to close that nosecone and lock it up. After that, dragon will begin to reenter the earths atmosphere and we will experience a six minute communications blackout. We will not be able to sing commands or receive telemetry, but that is ok. Dragon is autonomous, designed to steer itself anyway. That blackout communication period will last for about six minutes. A couple minutes after that, after we regain communications with the crew, we will deploy the parachutes. These are designed to begin to slow the vehicle down even further and also to stabilize the dragon capsule. About a minute or two after they deployed, we will fire off the four orangetes, and white parachutes that will create more air resistance, slowing the vehicle down to a mere 16 Miles Per Hour as the capsule splashes down into the gulf of mexico. We have aed a designated landing location off the coast of pensacola, florida. Confirmed,hdown is the parachutes will be cut from the capsule autonomously, and the recovery crew will begin to move into position to retrieve bob and doug. The team will be waiting three nautical miles away from the splashdown site. Whenever the splashdown approaches, they will move closer. They will get the capsule ready to be lifted onto the recovery vessel. Once that is secure in the nest, they will get to open the hatch and have bob endo egress or bob and doug egress or exit. Breath of their first fresh air in two months. We are excited. All of that will be coming up shortly. Those events we have in the future, the deorbit burn and the jettisoning of the trunk, will all be in three hours exactly. My countdown shows that the trunk separation will be happening three hours from now. So we are looking forward to all of those events coming up. It is going to be a very exciting morning. Like i said, seeing bob and doug come out from the capsule on that recovery vessel, go navigator, will be the first time they are back down on earth for the first time in two months. Safety is everything. And of course, the human body experiences microgravity. Just to be safe, we will place mynto a wheelchair mind is blank a stretcher. Essentially, we will be helping bob and doug after they get out of the capsule. You see the crewmembers get typically lifted out of the capsule physically, and then put into chairs, where they are able to do medical checks, take their pulse, and give them a moment to rest. It can be pretty jarring on the body when you reenter a gravity environment after living in space for several months. We are doing Everything Possible to keep them safe, not only aysically, but we also have lotta protocols put in place with the coronavirus. Are really awesome morning coming up a really awesome morning coming up. The recovery ship. On your screen, and we have live views coming your way from go navigator as it makes its way off the coast of pensacola, florida. On the righthand side of your screen, you see the hydraulic lift that will be used to hoist dragon out of the water and into the nest, which is just barely out of view their. Out of view there. It will be moved toward the interior of the deck and that is where we will open the hatch and have bob and doug come out. It is a pictureperfect day. The cds look really,. Really calm. Ook we were looking at about one mile per hour for, which is fantastic. A live view coming to us from go navigator as it makes its way toward the pensacola recovery zone. You could not have asked for Better Weather than we got today. Wereis one thing we keeping a close eye on as today approached. Our conditions where we had to have not only our prime site with go whether conditions but go weather conditions but our alternate site as well. Dragon has the capability to go to alternate sites as well. Theyit is in free flight, locked in panama city is the alternate site as the alternate site. Had three sites around florida that were not in consideration this weekend. Were able to get great weather in pensacola. Go navigator is on its way. It left the port about half an hour ago. We have been following its progress. One of its backup generators failed and they were working to replace it with another one. They were not able to get it there in time, but that was not a constraint. Go navigator is still perfectly capable of recovering the capsule and bob and doug from the ocean in its current state. Questionstaking your through twitter using the asknasa. The next question comes from jim. What of those people in that room doing . That is Mission Control in spacexs headquarters in hawthorne california. Dragonou see our operators and mission directors. They are continuing to monitor dragon. To fly itselfgned autonomously. There are very few things that the people in that room have to command manually, but for those things, it is a lot of data review and verifying that the conditions that need to be in place before sending commands are achieved. Essentially are responsible for monitoring the health and safety and telemetry of aircrew and capsule of our crew and capsule. Are justn controls part of human spaceflight. When dragon was docked in the International Space station, it was powered time power down most of the time, but they still came in to do checks. This is just another chance to see how it integrated into the overall station system as we were passing both energy and electrical power to and from dragon while it was docked. They were also doing a habitability study. We did a bunch of demonstration flights on the way up to the station with bob and doug manually controlling the spacecraft. This habitability study was something they were doing on board. Justs largely kind of spatial tests where they were inside dragon, practicing getting inside of their suits, doing leak checks, and they had crewmembers come and join them so they could test out sleeping arrangements. Four people in microgravity in a dragon capsule. They were able to do that to give teams some real, tangible, this is how we will do this when we are flying full operational crews, the first one coming up as early as the end of september. Next question comes to us from ed. Opendid they get the hatch once dragon has splashed down and who will be doing it . Good question. We will not open the hatch until dragon is lifted out of the water in placed onto the recovery vessel. The hatch will be manually opened. Be theght surgeon will first person to his head in and say hello to bob and doug while they are strapped in, making sure they are feeling ok and that everything went well. Then we will have them unstrapped and help them exit from the vehicle and go in to the medical tent for a full medical evaluation. A good question. From forxt one comes the love of tennis. Shuttle returne from space, he could hear a sonic boom. With that happen with dragon . As far as i know, no. If it will likely hear it does happen as dragon will be passing over the golf for its entire passing over the gulf of mexico for its entire dissent entire descent. If it were to happen, it would be over the gulf of mexico. We will come back to this later and get you an answer. Our next question comes from lakin. Be able tond doug feel the capsule rocking in the water . Our answer is an unequivocal yes. They will feel a bit of a jolt. Landings mightuz be rougher, but those use soft landing engines, and astronauts compare those to a minor car crash. You are still strapped into his seat and kind of hitting into something. They will definitely feel that. They have been talking about their expectations for rocking in the water. They have been graphic at times and what weight at times in what they think they might experience, seasickness, but they are prepared nonetheless. Given the fact that they have both flown on shuttle mentions missions extensive physical training, for all their Missions Including this one. Ive mentioned before that the gs that we are expecting to encounter during reentry is around 4 gs. We also saw that during the large portion of the mission, so they should not be anything too different from what that experience previously. For a point of reference for those of us who have not been to space, there are many roller coasters across the world but deliver four gs or more throw the ride at one point or another. It is safe to say that it might sound like a lot for those of us who have not been to space, but it is kind of a moderately intense roller coaster. That, they will feel the splashdown and they will feel the rocking a little bit. If there are waves, the most recent Weather Report indicated that the waves were not going to be too bad. All in all, we are expecting it to be a pretty comfortable touchdown. Question comes from terry and doug. At what speed will the castle that the water . Willie capsule hit the water . We are anticipating 15 or 16 Miles Per Hour. We are targeting just off the coast of pensacola, florida, that is where our recovery ship is en route to. When the capsule is reentering the earths atmosphere, the atmosphere itself is helping to slow it down, we will deploy parachutes to help further slowing down. By the time it hits the top of the ocean, its only going 15 or 16 Miles Per Hour. Our next question comes from ezekiel who asks one that a lot of people are going to be thinking about. To buy tickets soon for traveling to the International Space station . Good timing, as that is something we are looking at in the nottoodistant future. Nasa recently committed to supporting at least does go private Astronaut Missions per year to the International Space station. There are a number of companies, spacex included that have been working to develop the capabilities to fly private citizens, nongovernment astronauts into space and potentially to the International Space station. I would say definitely follow the industry, keep an eye out. Prices will likely be a little bit high at first, but that really is a major goal right now to try to open it up to those who are not necessarily just government. Long, hasel, for so just been the realm of government who have the funding to do these kinds of things and weve seen basically an explosion of commercial activity. The International Space station has been the cornerstone of enabling the entire market with the marketplace and a capability for research and transportation. Another question comes to us from twitter using the asknasa from chris. How airtight is the iss . Thatnk it is safe to say the International Space station is completely airtight, given the fact that it is orbiting , ith in the vacuum of space has to be airtight in order to make sure that the crew is safe throughout their stay. It is essentially airtight. There is enough that you will get a tiny bit of leaks through seals so is never anything where you will be sucked up against the side of the hacks or anything like that, but just because making something perfectly vacuumproof is extremely hard especially when you have some the interconnecting parts. Thats why we do occasionally have to inject additional breathing gases into the space station atmosphere in these super condensed spheres. Just to top off the atmosphere inside of the International Space station, but great question. Lets do one more. Why are spacecrafts usually painted white . That is a good question. Speaking, a law of comes down to preference. Vehicles are black and white. Of course, it is currently silver. All of our operational vehicles are black or white, and in this case, it just so happens that in order to conform to that aesthetic, the paint that we use, the thermal protective paint on top of those panels on the exterior, we make it white. A lot of other things are white exactly the reason she just said. Space, the only way you can really heat up is through radiation. Surface, it black is just like down here on planet earth. If you wear a black shirt you feel hotter because your shirt is basically absorbing more of that radiation. Cooler, you can paint them white with these reflective coatings. We have a lot of things we call thermal blankets which are essentially white fabrics that will cover up metallic areas of the space station that would otherwise get really hot in direct sunlight, they keep them cool just with that white color. Great question. Again, were taking your sa so bes for the askna sure to continue to submit those. We will get to as many as we can. For now were just going to continue to watch bob and doug. We are a little less than three hours away now from things really starting to pick up. Were going to be looking for all of those events that we talked through starting with that separation coming up soon. Everything is still on track for a slash down at 11 48 a. M. Pacific, 18 48 universal time. So stay tuned. Kickin space explorer spacex for 4. 7000. Go ahead, spacex. Just a couple minutes into the time, i wanted to give you guys 0. Go for all sections of 4. 0. Were standing by to support. Copy that. Section three, and we will report the status of the inventory here in a few minutes. Suit donning, we are in our comfort garments and we are starting protocol. Copies. Pacex you got your comfort garments and have started loading, thank you for the update. So we just heard a call up to the crew that they are getting into some of their activities to get ready for this. They are about to get suited up. We heard there in their comfort garments, the black athletic clothes that theyre going to wear at the base lay underneath their suits. They are also in orthostatic pants or shorts that they are wearing and that helps to kind of squeeze or increase the blood flow as they are going to be going from all of the fluid being up around their heads to being back in a gravity situation where your blood and everything goes around her legs due to pull her gravity. As jarring of a transition from the fluid shift happening. To prepareing that for the readaptation to gravity, also doing fluid loading which has been shown to help with orthostatic intolerance. Essentially, they wont feel as dizzy or disoriented when they get back down. It helps by actually increasing the amount in the blood for when they reenter gravity. All that going on board right now. Its exciting to hear that they are beginning to what do last phases that crew members need to complete prior to reentry. We are about two hours 20 minutes away from the next physical milestone in terms of the vehicle is self. We will have what is known as claw separation, when the mechanism that contain the umbilical tower and fluids between the trunk and the capsule, we will separate that in order to allow us to jettison the trunk. By doing so, the heat shield of the castle will be exposed and allowing dragon to be ready for reentry. A couple minutes after we jettison the trunk away from the capsule, we will then maneuver the capsule into a position to allow it to perform the deorbit burn. We are aiming for the gulf of mexico today, specifically off the coast of pensacola, florida is our designated landing zone. After the burn completes, which we are expecting that to be about 11. 5 minutes, we will close the nose cone and lock it and a couple minutes after that, we will begin to reenter the atmosphere and things will start to get pretty hot. And everything is going to be standing by in the recovery zone once they are done with that deorder burn. Making itsive view way out to the recovery zone. Ago,ft just a few hours just about two hours 10 minutes ago making its way out from pensacola. Be about three naga miles away from the anticipated splashdown site at which point it will take just around 30 minutes to close in on the capsule. That was pretty much the only issue that i come down so far was with a backup generator, they were not able to get a replacement one on board in time, but they still enable us stillwith this operation, fully capable of affecting a recovery this morning. Recovery time we are looking at 11 4 years 11 48 a. M. Pacific, 18 48 universal. You have a couple of hours before the action really kicks in but we will continue to be bringing you coverage throughout the entire mission, hopefully we will have more great views from our recovery ship making its way to the splashdown location. Like we said before, the recovery vessel is currently carrying about 40 people. Its actually a combination of spacex and nasa people. They all have specific jobs and whenever we are actually performing the recovery operations, you always see a small handful of individuals on board because safety is a top priority, not only for bob and doug but also for the personnel on board. We will make sure that unnecessary personnel will be away and in one of the back rooms whereas the operational deck during active recovery operations will have those key personnel involved. The tot be able to see send all the way for splashdown as well as the fast approach, those of the two smaller boats that make their way to dragon asterisk splashdown. They are doing the initial preparation of the capsule, preparing it to be lifted out of the water and onto the recovery vessel. Up, we pointed coming are looking forward to being able to show you all of that. Before, theed Recovery Team is a newer one here. The whole crew Recovery Process is newer, and it is really cool that we get to showcase than a little bit. The last time we were able to do so was about a year ago, a year and a half almost. Be sure to stay tuned tuned throughout the entire Recovery Process. Once that is lifted up and out of the water and is secured, that will be our first opportunity to hopefully get a thumbs up from bob and doug indicating that they are feeling good after the return. We expected to take about one hour from splashdown to getting out of the capsule during a lot of it will because those initial checks happening in the opening minutes following splashdown and it will take about 30 minutes the primary vessel to go down to get very close to the dragon capsule itself. Once it is there, it will take only a few more minutes to lifted onto the boat and move it toward the crew recovery back to houston after they complete the checkouts at Pensacola Air station. Then the bes part of the day, family reunions. Im sure bob and doug are looking forward to being able to give their family hugs again and in less than 24 hours, if you were tuned in earlier, you may have caught the special wakeup message sent to bob and doug to bring them out of their sleep each have one son and it was a nice little audio recording saying daddy, wake up, wake up. I highly encourage you to check it out because it is certainly heartwarming and secondary. The secondary was logged in as panama city. Everything is looking great with the weather today. As we talked, we had constraints of 10 miles an hour for the wind and our initial Weather Report last night, we were a mile an hour and got upgraded to to miles an hour. Winds have doubled but when you go from one to two miles an hour, well within the limit. Still looking forward to if and splash down. The most recent Weather Report is that the waves are look really calm. The the threshold for the waves is based on how high the wave is going to get and how frequently. Waves occur in this type of paef pattern. We cant have waves high very frequently. That makes recovery operations dangerous. Were pleased to report that the last information we got regarding the weather anticipated a splash down are very small waves. Pull it up here real quick. It was something like, here we go. Just a half a foot every second. It is if youre ocean baseline is here, every six seconds your ocean if your ocean baseline is here your wave comes up half a foot every six seconds. It is calm and were really happy to see that while unfortunately the the weather and the Atlantic Ocean landing zones was cool operating. Were happy to report the anticipated weather for splash down today is going to be mild and based on the views that we were seeing from go navigator earlier quite a picture perfect day. We track it closely. If you follow since may, weather was in the conversation and we had to scrub the first attempt due to bad weather in the area. Were able to pinpoint between clouds for the second launch on may 30th and then, we were watching it extremely closely today too. Or even in the leadup to where we are today. Were going to continue to have weather checkpoints right before landing. Thats the final opportunity. We actually have a question from twitter, just a reminder, ask nasa on twitter. This one, if the splashdown was scrubbed could dragon go back o we dont have a plan to rendezvous with the International Space station, we were not going to undock until we had good weather at an alternate location, both at the time that we left. If, for some reason, we had to leave within the next hour or so from pensacola, dragon would continue the orbit, it would make some adjustments over the next 47 hours, and then we would target a splash down at panama city. We have to lock in that alternate site just a few hours ago. Dragon has the ability to change alternate sites so we could have targeted one of the other sites, potentially even back to pensacola two days later, but we were able to lock in panama city. Not anticipating to need that, but dragon does have the ability to reattempt a splashdown two days later. As we mentioned earlier, dragon will be performing a burden that will last 11. 5 minutes. That is the moment where we are sending dragon on its final trajectory to the landing zone. Aat maneuvering is performed little bit less than one hour prior to splashdown itself. Definitely continuing to monitor the weather until the very last summit that we can, but there is a little bit of flexibility in terms of if we have to waive off for 24 to 48 hours. They would remain in the capsule. Our next question comes from brian, who wanted to know what were bob and doug doing in space . Spent 62 days on board the International Space station as crew members and expedition 53 and they were fully fledged crew members, so they did the full gamut of space station operation. Everything from a secured in science, contributing more than 100 hours of their time to executing science experiments onboard from pretty much every discipline we have on Biology Technology demonstrations, to just learning more about the human body and how it adapts to spaceflight. Bob was part of four spacewalks along with Chris Cassidy, the two of them both now have 10 spacewalks in their careers, tying them for the most for u. S. Astronauts. So they were extremely busy while they were on the space station. I know chris was happy to read some help on board, it has just been him and the two russian cosmonauts the last several months. They are back in that situation now, and thats why we are really looking forward to them coming up this fall. Being on the International Space station in addition to and performing science experiments, you also have to week, you have to sleep, and you have to exercise. How,really easy to see whenever there are only a couple of people on the international aree station, things that exercise, eating and sleeping are absolutely essential. Exercise helps to keep the body strong and prevent the effects of microgravity on the human body. When it comes to what might get shifted out a little bit, its not exercise, is not eating, its not sleeping. Having two extra hands to assist with things like the spacewalk and being able to perform some of the signs on board was definitely a health. In addition, they were also completing mission objectives, making sure that the battery life was as expected, making sure that the solar panels were still absorbing and generating power as expected. I am sure that by the time they get home, they will be pretty tired, not just from the Dynamic Events happening today, but just from the last few months. Im getting tired just thinking about it. How much training does it take to be able to operate, control all of the technology on dragon and the things on space station . We typically train crew members for about two years. We had a couple who made it shorter than that, but typically have a crew members get assigned about two years out, and its then entire Time Training just to do day to day tasks. Everything from just operating the basic facilities, learning how to repair all the major pieces of hardware like the thing that generates your oxygen , how the water recycling system works. The next day you are a physicist, the next day you are spacewalking. They have to get a whole bunch of training in and it is done all over the world. You call a handyman when something goes wrong, you are the handyman. The next question comes to us from addie abby. This may be a silly question, but is there a telescope on the iss that the crew can use . They dont have a telescope. They dont actually have very many windows that look up at the stars. We have a number of sides experience that are on the International Space station that uses position outside of your atmosphere to look beyond our solar system. We have some that are not necessarily telescopes, but the spectrometer that is looking for signs of dark matter and we have one that was a japanese one in the name is escaping me, but it was essentially looking for pulsars throughout the universe and it was really cool. It was essentially developing a futuristic version of gps, where is looking to develop a system or a map where you could use some of the brightest objects in the universe to navigate. And obviously thats not something we need to worry about right now because were not leaving our solar system anytime soon, but we are already learning how to do that and we using International Space station to do it. They have some big lenses for their cameras, but those are pretty much wanted back down toward earth. , how does theion communication to dragon work, is it done for satellite . Partially coming yes. If you think about the International Space station orbiting earth, it technically is considered a satellite as well as a spaceship. And then we also have ground stations across the world that are able to provide links and downloads from the station as well as from dragon capsule itself. We tried to make all those connections as direct as possible to appear in Mission Control, for trying to reduce latency and make sure that we get highquality feeds. We try to avoid pingpong as much as possible. There are a number of ways, but generally speaking, we go from capsule to ground in a short distance as possible. When, does nasa had a fullsize mockup of the station in the Training Facility . We have several, actually. We have a building called the space vehicle mockup facility at the Johnson Space center in houston where we have a fullsize mockup of every single module. That is essentially saying every single module you can actually go inside. There is a huge part of the space station itself that is just external, that isnt pressurized, and the astronauts only receive when they are on it. To familiarize them with that part, we have a fullsize mockup in the bottom of our swimming pool, the practice have the spacewalk. So we have several. They are typically different fidelity. You will have some that have real science hardware, real oxygen generation systems. And then you will have some that are just kind of representative they might have a printed poster of what on the wall here. You can still use things like that for emergency training. We really try to do as much training on the ground, and i know we do the same in dragon, something that is life like for what they are about to be on what they are in space. And your actions just feel like reflex. At this point, were going to check in on dragon. Looks like it is about to go over eastern europe. Our feetng to show here and allow you to follow along. We still have two hours and one minute until our major milestone begins, that will be the toaration in preparation jettison the trunk. Again, that is coming up in two hours one minute at 10 51 a. M. The civic or 18 51 universal. Stay with us, and enjoy watching dragon. If you are joining us now or if you were not here for the start of our broadcast, we joined the International Space station while the astronauts were still on board the space station with their other three counterparts. And then we saw the crew board the crew dragon, say farewell, and don their suits and close that hatch of crew dragon. Shortly by nasa astronaut Chris Cassidy closing the hatch on the space station. We then stepped into the pressurization, the space in between the hatches that was exposed to vacuum whenever the crew dragon departed, and we saw an ontime departure, separation occurring at 4 35 p. M. Pacific time, that is 11 30 p. M. Gmt, the time used aboard the International Space station. We had those two short bursts using the thrusters on dragon and the umbilical detaching, from itsx releasing home for the past couple of months. We saw the first three departure boards of crew dragon, the first two bringing it up and over the International Space station. The astronauts were then able to take off their spacesuits and we just saw departure burn two which has lowered dragon and brought it down below the International Space station at all times. Next up for us will be departure burn three. We are looking for that at 6 14 pm pacific, 1 14 a. M. Gmt a pretty busy day for bob and doug aboard dragon. Theres actually a view of inside the cabin, you can actually see one of those the white and gray item on the lefthand side of the screen. Looks like that might be bob on the righthand side of the screen. Looks like i got a space in the way of this camera. They got someats storage room where weve got about 150 kilograms of cargo, more than half of that is scientific experiments and samples coming from the Research Program aboard the International Space station which is of course, a national laboratory. A numberlly had earlier, i think bob and doug combined had done one under 14 hours of science in the lab while they were on the International Space station. 114 hours besides. Outside ofot count those battery changes. Thef course is tripled amount of time we were able to do because that is the u. S. Lab and Chris Cassidy was prior to the arrival of crew dragon doing all this work on his own. So having bob and doug, on for a couple of months really expanded the amount of Scientific Research that was conducted. Some cool views of the interior, we got a sweet around of the cameras. Right now we are looking at a camera which sits ordinarily right behind the crew members, looking up at their displays. View that we had previous to this was a view looking toward and on the uphill portion of the mission, we got a quick tour of the interior dragon from bob and doug. Location 10, 2 additional and one frommed bag 206. Empty, 270, and 206 host remaining. From location 9, 3 bottles were consumed from 203. That leaves 203 and 204 as empty. Everything else was part of the packing plan. Ok, thanks for the update. Consumed to bottles, 206 consumed one bottle. Two a and 207 are empty and 206 has does the remaining. Copy totion nine, we bottles from 203, i believe, and that means 203 and 204 empty. The rest for packing plan. From location 9, 203 and 204 are empty and Everything Else is per the packing plan. Uncorrected,tion 203 and 204 empty, the rest per packing plan. And just one more sanity check, can you tell us the total number of bottles consumed . Let me try to do the math from my notes here. I believe since departing, we have consumed 13 bottles. Copy, 13 bottles. We will reconcile our records down here and let you know if you got any questions. Thanks very much. We are about to close out so it is nine and 10, not going to be practical to go back and reinventory anything. If theres any questions after about three minutes. Please let us know if you can early. Copy. We actually do have a question for location 10, back 206, can you please reject the quantity remaining . Read back the quantity remaining . It looks like we made a mistake. I thought they had three in each one and one was removed. The quantity inside of 206 we have a good read out that 206 started at five bottles. If you took to out of there, we can call that three. Cracks from 206, we took a single bottle out. Let me count them for you. Ok. Thanks for that double check. Now there are four, bottles remaining. Four bottles remaining, that math makes better sense. Appreciate it. Excuse to, this is International Space station. We are ready for the event. Copy that. We are also ready to send over to you. Welcome aboard the International Space station and the crew of expedition 63. It is an exciting day for us all as we did farewell to our two friends and colleagues, bob and doug, as they complete the journey of this amazing test mission. It was roughly two months ago when we were right at this very hatch and greeted them aboard and we changed from a crew of three to a crew of five and fantasticwo months of space station science and technical objectives with spacewalks and robotics that we are very proud of and we are very happy to have doug and bob be part of that. Little sad to see them go, but very excited for what it means for our International Space station to add this capability to bring people back and forth to the space station in lowearth orbit with another capability such as the crew of dragon. Before i hand the microphone over to bob and doug, i want to make mention of this very special flag that has deep, deep space history, getting deeper. This flag will return to earth with the crew dragon guys. It spent a little time on earth and very soon will make a trip to the moon in short order. All yours. Lag is it has been a pleasure. Its all yours. Thanks for this. This flag has spent some time up here, on the order of nine years since we dropped it off on ses 135, so we are proud to return this flag home and see what is next for it on its journey to the moon. Wordshard to put into just what it was like to be part of this expedition, expedition 63. It will be a memory that will last a lifetime for me, all the incredible teamwork and accomplishments with the highlights being before spacewalks that we worked together, literally as a crew of five, to have success and complete that part of the upgrade for the International Space station which leaves it in a great posture for the future. The other thing to think about for us is our mission is not over. The dm to test flight is in some ways just two thirds complete. We did the scent, the rendezvous, and the docking. We completed our docked objectives and now as the entry dissent and splashdown phase, after we undock, hopefully a little later today. We are going to be really focused on completing those objectives. The teams are working really hard, especially with the dynamics of the weather over the next few days around florida, and we appreciate those efforts because those decisions and that work is not easy. And for the men and women of the commercial crew program and spacex, all of the work they have done to get us to this point where we are on our way to completing this test flight, it has been a true honor. As doug mentioned, we are part of a test mission that began two months ago with the initial success of launching from american soil, bringing lunches of astronauts back to the florida coast. Im extremely proud to have been a part of that. We accomplished the next third of the mission which is our time on orbit and checking out dragon while it was docked to ensure it would be ready for the next launch of the crew one astronauts as they head to the space station for an even longer stay. As doug mentioned, we are about to embark on the final portion of the journey. I have referred to some of our spacex friends as the hardest part was getting us launched, but the most important part is bringing us home. So i look forward to the test objectives not only separating from the International Space station smoothly, but then coming down to a nice splashdown off the florida coast, too, full circle bringing that capability to launch astronauts to the United States. As i look back on the mission we have had here on the International Space station, i am proud to have been part of much of the science activities that happened over the last two months, as doug and chris mentioned, the spacewalks and robotics activities. Chris and i were able to join fewspacewalk club, just a short months ago i did not think i would do another spacewalk and now to have the chance to have done for more with commander cassidy was the icing on the cake for a wonderful mission. Look forward to heading back home for the splashdown, i do think from a family dougstive, my son and son are happy not only to get gere fathers back, our zero indicator that they nominated to go with us on this Historic Mission to the International Space station and bringing that launch and return capability. So, for jack and theo, the pettis orris is headed home atasaurus is heading back with us. Everything picked up when we departed yesterday and has been a smooth ride so far. Everything kicked off on saturday on their 52nd day on board the International Space station, their 63rd day in space. Bob and doug began to get the capsule ready for their light for their ride home. Everything picked up when they got the final cargo into the dragon capsule and got themselves in and closed the hatch. Crawling in through the top hatch coming getting suited up shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, on the station side, hatch,assidy closed the creating the vestibule, the space between two hatches that will be exposed to vacuum after undocking. Then we used the depressurization step, bringing it down to vacuum and getting it ready for that physical separation or undocking. After that was complete, the teams down here on the ground, x in hawthorne and the International Space station Flight Control did a go no go for systems undocking and the help of the International Space station. Following that, we had a successful separation using draco thrusters around the Service Section to physically separate from the International Space station. After hooks were dripping back driven back. Then it was on 24 the parch or burns spread over a number of hours, taking dragon up and over the International Space station which audit behind and after it lowered its orbit beneath the station, bringing it out in front. Thoseing all of successful departure burns, it was just about time for the crew to get some sleep and during that, we were able to do the departure phasing burn. It is a little off in this timeline as it switched in the final hours leading up to the departure. Dragon spacex, we have you loud and clear for, check. I read you the same. Just pausing the timeline as the crew does their comms check so they have communications running through the umbilical in their seats directly into their suits where they are able to maintain a conversation with the ground. We heard a little chatter a few minutes ago as they were finishing up the fluid loading. That is done to help with combating static intolerance. That is dizziness in most people. Fluid loading can help your body typically at is rush of blood away from the head once you get back in a gravity environment which can make you extremely dizzy, so fluid loading, you can up the amount of plasma in your blood and that helps minimize that. They are also wearing what is known as an orthostatic varmint. They are essentially compression pants that squeezes their legs and forces the fluid from their legs to the upper part of their body. Everything is continuing to proceed, they are suited up inside dragon for the second time in the last one he four hours as we get ready for this deorbit. You can see a shot of Mission Control here at spacex headquarters in hawthorne, california. Those folks there are dragon operators, the technical experts that continue to monitor the data and telemetry coming down from dragon. Not only about the vehicle but the crew themselves, continuing to make sure everything is going well and that we are green or go to step into the next major milestones we have coming up. At this point, we are about an hour and a half away from that. Those milestones will begin with the claw separation, which is when we initiate the jettison of the trunk. In order to expose the heat shield under the capsule, we need to let the trunk go away, so we separate the two, that the earthseenter atmosphere and it will disintegrate upon doing so. We have a nice little animation here, so i will toss it to dan. We did the departure phasing burn. That is what set us up on the path to our we are today. Then the crew did have a sleep time, this is about a 19 hour trip from the station to the splashdown. Andre almost up to claw trunk separation. Pacific, wea. M. Will have the claw and trunk separation, which will basically allow it to expose the heat shield and prepare us to execute the deorbit burn. Thats intended to lace dragon on its final trajectory to its landing zone, which is determined to be off the coast of pensacola, florida. The burn will last about 11 and a half minutes. After doing so, we will close and lock the nosecone. We do that to protect the forward hatch located at the top of the capsule and we do that becausee deorbit burn that is what we use to perform the burn. Once the nose cone is closed, we enter a six minute long commute occasion blackout. This is because we are reentering the atmosphere. As we encounter the atmosphere and friction builds up, plasma builds up on the external sides of the capsule, creating a barrier where we cannot command the capsule or receive telemetry. However, dragon is completely autonomous. It is driving it self at that point. That blackout lasts for six minutes. A couple of minutes after that, we will deploy the parachutes. They are used for a of reasons. One, to help slow the vehicle down before we deploy the main parachutes as well as the stabilizer vehicle. About a minute after deployment, we will deploy the four main parachutes. If you watched our demo one splashdown, they are big, beautiful and orange. They slow the vehicle down to 15 or 16 miles an hour. That is the speed they will be going when they splashdown in the gulf of mexico. We are targeting the east coast of florida just off the coast of pensacola. Once it is confirmed and we cut the main parachute so they do not pull the capsule, recovery operations begin immediately. Gettingails essentially ,he capsule out of the water lifting it on to the recovery vessel, and once that is secure, we open the hatch and get our first glimpse of bob and doug back here on planet earth for the First Time Since they launched on falcon 9 back in late may. That particular moment will be the first time they get to breathe fresh air and we are looking forward to getting some thumbs up from them when we see them exit the capsule. Everything is lining up for an ontime splashdown and recovery. We have been following the progress of go navigator as it makes its way to the recovery zone. It left its port in pensacola a few hours ago and we are tracking that it should be arriving on station just about at the top of this current hour. It will be there in advance of the upcoming hardware milestones , so it will be there and ready with the operational team, a little over 40 Personnel Team ready to assist in the recovery of the capsule and getting bob and doug home. As the Mission Controllers there and our Mission Control center here just to my left continue to monitor dragon, we continue to monitor twitter for your questions. We are using me have tag ask nasa and we are trying to get through as many questions as possible. Our next question comes from jackie. The question is what is the name of the dragon recovery vessel sailing to the splashdown location . Great question, because we have two of them. When we are utilizing today is go navigator. This recovery ship is for all of our all of the splashdown locations on the west coast of lord. So any potential splashdown in the gulf of mexico is serviced by go navigator. For our east coast landing sites, which we will not be attempting today, we use go search her. Both go navigator and go search or are identical. Fully recoverable platforms and medical bases. We are able to assist the departure process, so departing the International Space station, its great that we are able to assist that by allowing more opportunities for departure by having more landing sites. Today, we are using go navigator and it parted for the landing zone about two and half hours ago. In route to the designated landing zone off the course of coast of pensacola. The next question what is the importance of inventory check during splashdown . Just a few minutes ago, you heard bob and doug going through a wide range of inventory checks. A lot of it is their food and water, particularly the water as they completed the fluid loading. We have to meticulously track every single item on the spacecraft for the obvious reasons, like if the astronaut needs to find it, it helps to know where it is. Then for some of the less obvious reasons like we have to track where everything is and if something is missing, you have get back onhen you the ground. For things like food and water, that is something we call a consumable. Those are resources that you have a finite amount of. About threeer, have days worth of food and plenty of water on board. Limiting the consumable for this flight home as was discussed in our prereturn news conference. Carbon dioxide scrubbing was the low man on the totem pole for the trip home. They have about three days worth. So you have to think of all these different items that are lifesupport systems that fall under that consumable, whatever you are mapping, the orbit lifetime that you have. We knew we were either going to return today or within 47 hours so we make sure we have plenty for that situation and ours beyond that is just extra margin. We are always about redundancy and backup plans and every thing like that. Something else to consider with respect to inventory, during reentry, we dont want anything loose flying around. That is hazardous to the crew, so taking inventory of what has un stowed and restowed. Its easy to let go of something and it might drift off behind the control panel. Its very easy for things to drift off on the International Space station and get lost. Having the inventory allows us to make sure there are not any foreign objects that are not supposed to be out during the times in which they are meant to be stowed. So inventory is important for a number of reasons. Our next question comes from tim. He says my 10yearold daughter wants to know how hot the exterior of the spacecraft will get during reentry. Awesome. Morning,ng, good thank you for tuning into the webcast. We are pleased to have young viewers join in for these Historic Missions. A really good question. The outside of dragon quest dragon capsule will reach 3500 degrees fahrenheit. That is very hot, but bob and doug will be safe and comfortable inside the dragon capsule. We have measures in place to make sure the inside of the capsule will be flush with cold air as well as the inside of their spacesuit. Even though the outside will be getting hot, bob and doug will rarely be breaking a sweat. Our next question will the super draco thrusters be a backup to the parachutes . Thats a good question because one of the earliest designs of dragon had it doing a propulsive lying propulsive landing. An early design had landing propulsive lay, so using those super dracos to touch down on a runway. That is no longer in dragons configuration. Those thrusters are completely inhibited following a successful flight into orbit. They are only used for an emergency escape situation either on the pad or during the initial climb up to orbit. They enable dragon to do that escape from the pad all the way up so you have that extra safety net your entire way uphill. Once they are on orbit and making their way to the space station or coming home, those thrusters are disabled. We are only using the smaller thrusters around the Service Section of the bottom of the capsule itself and the four at the very top, the forward bulkhead dressers. Our next question is from amy what happens to the parachutes after splashdown . Are they recovered . After splashdown, there will be two smaller boats that will be approaching the dragon capsule. The first is responsible for determining that there are not any toxic vapors surrounding the capsule. That fast boat will be responsible for preparing the capsule for lift out of the water. The second boat is responsible for retrieving the parachutes out of the water. We definitely dont want to leave any waste behind where possible. That second boat is responsible for retrieving the parachutes. After splashdown, those parachutes are automatically cut so theres no potential that if there was a little wind that the dragon capsule would not be moved due to wind catching in the parachutes. Great question. They are cut, automatically after spout after splashdown, then one of the cruise is responsible for picking them up. From novauestion is con. Whats the purpose of the crew for the crew one mission . The crew one mission will be what we call the first operational flight of the dragon spacecraft. Mission we are on right now is a demonstration, a test mission. s are proving out dragon capabilities launch through splashdown. After this test, if everything goes well and we are lined up great for splashdown today, we will sit down and go through a certification process to fly Operational Missions. This means they will be flying regular expedition long flights. It will be a first fourperson crew to launch and spend six months aboard the International Space station. We will have four individuals, launching in dragon and spending six months on board the space station doing science experience, conducting space walks, repairs, everything a normal expedition crew does. They will just be arriving and leaving in a dragon. I think commander Chris Cassidy will still be on board given the targeted crew one launch. [indiscernible] weve got you five by five, bob. [indiscernible] repeat last five seconds of that call. We had a calm dropout. Dropout. [indiscernible] we copy that you heard us loud and clear, the rest of the message was garbled. Please repeat one more time. Good calm check between both of us and we are complete with suit donning. Copy. That was five by five. We copy you are complete with suit donning procedure. Sounds like the crew is now suited up. They just conducted that communication checks with the crew here in hawthorne. The personentially talking directly to bob and doug throughout their flight. It is there are a couple of positions and we are on the third shift of their flight home. That will be pretty much the person getting all the updates to and from bob and doug, being the liaison between the teams on the ground. Checksd the successfully. They will stay in their suits ended in their seats for the rest of the day pretty much. D orbit preparation when dorbit preparation when able. Spacex dragon, we are complete with sections one section five, the only thing left to do is decimal to. Everything else is complete. Copy sections one through four are complete and sounds have sounds like you are completing fluid loading and standing by for a leak check. [indiscernible] thanks, doug, appreciate it. What we heard there was commute occasion between dragon i just wanted to check back on the com dropout that you had. Now . S this com was that explainable as random dropouts or continuing . Then, we you fine just are investigating root cause, but giving given the clarity of your call just now, i suspecting your audio system is healthy. Copy. Thank you. We heard a little communication confirming Mission Control was able to read or hear, as it is referred to bob and doug clearly as they have put on their suits. We heard the go for leak checks. Now that their suits are on, we will be performing a quick leak check. We do this every time the suits are put on or don, as you heard it called. This is the only time we pressurize the suits throughout the mission and it is essentially to make sure all of the zippers are zipped up properly. All it takes is one small unzipped peace to not hold the pressure, so we make sure everything is fitted up accordingly and ready to go in case of a need to pressurize the suit later in the mission. Knowely, but it is nice to for testing purposes to know that capability is there. It is what they are designed for. The leak check will commence and that, we will pressurize the suits they will depressurized and then bob and doug will be able to lift the visor on their helmet again and that is what they will be wearing during this last phase of their mission as they reenter earths atmosphere. A lot of good stuff there. No call. We are taking your questions through twitter this morning, using the hash tag ask nasa. Our next question comes from robert. Supporting navy recovery with ships and aircraft . They are not. I suspect that comes from the last time we did splashdowns with u. S. Spacecraft and astronauts where we had the navy assisting throughout the Apollo Program for the recoveries. Assisting in this. All the recovery assets for the nominal mission is spacex. Spacex owns both recovery ships assisting in this. All the recovery assets for the and contract with the different helicopters and other assets used in the recovery. Nasa does have a department of defense backup, essentially. If bob and doug were to have to splashdown anywhere other than those seven spots we target around florida, we have the capability to call them up for rescue and recovery using pera jumpers or whatever assets are available to us. They are also called up on lunch days in the event we were to have an abort on the way to orbit with them coming down somewhere in the atlantic. Now, today, everything is spacex and nasa. Another question coming to us is there a time limit on how long the capsule can be left to float in the Atlantic Ocean before it needs to be recovered . Theously we want to get crew out as soon as possible, let them get out and stretch their legs and begin their medical evaluations. However, the capsule would be able to float for a couple of days, likely mentioned before. There is enough onboard water and food. They would be comfortable, although if the waves pick up, i would not be comfortable. That being said, we do strive to recover them as soon as possible. This is part of the reason we numerous potential landing zone sites and special criteria for where they actually land to ensure we are able to get the crew up and out of the water and into the medical base, essentially within an hour after splashdown. Our next one comes from mark who wants to know can they take over from the computer and do a manual splashdown if required . They can. Initiating a deorbit or emergency deorbit is one of the capabilities available on board. You would have to be in a pretty extreme situation to do that. Its something not in today because every thing has gone smoothly but that is something available to them. They also have the capability to manually step in for a number of different steps during reentry. Mainly for any parachute deployment or cutting the parachute after they have splashdown. That does not happen automatically. They have a button in front of them on their displays where they can make that happen. They have quite a bit of capability if required. That is one of the few hardwired buttons on their display panel, but not one that can be triggered accidentally. It is a twostep verification lever essentially. No need to worry about performing an emergency deorbit accidentally. Fromquestion comes to us nasa plus space equals heart. Dragon be reused . Yes, it will. Its intended to be used on the mission. We already have plans for reuse for it. The team at the cape is already preparing to begin those refurbishment processes. As soon as the capsule lands, getting a start on that. The capsule is waterproof. Thats a process we learned to do through the crew cargo program. Our reuse efforts with that program with our previous version of the dragon capsule, also known as dragon one, the process of making that waterproof, that knowledge we learned from that has transferred over to crew dragon capsules and it is safe to say its with very little refurbishment required to the internal hardware. There is very little refurbishment required because we are able to keep it watertight and eliminate exposure to saltwater, which for metallic surfaces does cause erosion causing corrosion, which is no good for spaceflight. We will be using this next year on the nasa crew2 mission. What are bob and doug bringing back from iss if anything . There is quite a bit. They have about 150 kilograms or a little over 330 pounds of cargo, essentially strapped to the ground right under their seats. The lions share of that is utilization or science samples. A lot of it is cold stowage samples kept in powered freezers. Those are coming from a range of biological, biomedical studies. A lot of them with the astronauts themselves as the test subjects. Capability as we execute a lot of science on the station but we need to return it for analysis at the labs here on earth. They will be bringing a lot of that down. They are also returning vehicle hardware items that have malfunctioned or have passed their service life and need to come home and be inspected. A couple of their personal items, their sleeping bags are coming back. They also have a couple of special items, including the there zero g was indicator and the flag that was left there, the final Space Shuttle mission, that is coming home. It has been up there for nine years and it will fly in when we send humans around the moon in the not too distant future. I know we havent seen it, but i have heard little earth is also coming back. I almost forgot about that. Little earth was the zero g indicator on demo one and remained on station after that and pretty sure it was packed away to come home on demo two. I think you are right. Right now, dragon is currently flying over the far South Pacific ocean. We have a nice little map here to show you of our ground tracking. So there you can see it on your screen. The yellow indicates where the capsule is in daylight. The red part of the line indicates where it goes into eclipse or basically when its hiding in earths shadow. Right now, it is in daylight. Bob and doug must be getting spectacular views as they are completing their suit up process. At this point, we are going to take a quick break and leave you with our lovely ground map here. Dragon spacex for video. Request to come back aboard when you are ready. We are ready for you to come aboard. Outstanding. [crosstalk]x dragon departing. Dragon spacex separation confirmed. Physical separation 4 35 pacific. Looking good, counting down to a nominal departure burn coming shortly. Dragon spacex depart burn zero complete. Complete. You heard depart burn zero complete, moving slightly faster away from the space station using the Service Section dracos. With that, bob and doug have concluded their stay aboard the International Space station. They are on their way back to planet earth. Confirm physical separation at 4 35 pacific. Any of the dynamic phase of the mission. They will zip up the suits and [crosstalk] dragon spacex, you are go to pressurize. Bob behnken and doug hurley getting ready to go. Ssurized night rocks pressurized nitrox. These suits are worn as a line of defense to protect crewmembers against the harsh environment of outer space if they were to experience cap and depressurization, any kind of poisonous leak in their atmosphere or even a fire on these suits are designed to protect from all those different instances. The suit leak check is pretty standard anytime we get into one of these dynamic operations. We want one more check to make sure that this suit is ready to go in case it is called upon. They will pressurize now and pump some nitrogen and oxygen through their suits and look for it to maintain a constant pressure and then once that is done, they will depressurized the suits and leave the zipper leave onecally unzipped a little bit when they are not pressurized and will still have cool air flowing through. They will do what is called a suit purge for we do the deorbit burn. At the same time they flush the cabin atmosphere itself with some cooled down air, they will throw some cold air through the suit to regulate the temperature, the cooling effect inside that temperature to make sure the environment stays at a comfortable temperature for them while the dragon capsule heats up to 3500 degrees fahrenheit outside. We have about one minute left in the suit leak check and we will wait for the results on that and there will be one more box checked on the way to the burn, reentrybit and splashdown. One interesting thing to note, if you are watching the ground track, you are going to start to see that line coming out of the bottom left corner and ending in the gulf, that means we are on our final orbit. Dragon is a sickly on its last lap around planet earth. The last 90 minutes it is going to spend until we get to the splashdown. You can keep an eye on that. The line is going to stop moving where you can see it terminate in the gulf. Dragon spacex, we show nominal leak check. We show the same. There a minute ago, we had confirmation of nominal leak check. Just checking another box off the to do list as bob and doug continue their return home back to planet earth. Up next, we will be making sure rox system is safe and we are able to proceed into the dissent to of our the gulf of mexico. We are aiming for a splashdown just off the coast of pensacola, florida. Right now, our recovery ship is to thatd designated location zone and it will be there ready and waiting for bob and doug to splashdown. There on your screen, we have a live shot from go navigator, our recovery ship located in the gulf of mexico. You can get a little bit of a feel for the wave action weve got there. Generally speaking, pretty calm looking based on the waves we can see in the shot. We are excited to welcome bob and doug back home. Just checking my timeline landing iney are just under two hours. We are looking at one hour 50 seven minutes. That will be happening at 11 48 pacific time, 18 48 universal coordinated time. Before we get to their water landing, we have to perform a couple of steps prior to that. If you have been following along this morning, you are probably very familiar with this. Perhaps for those of you who have joined in and the last few minutes, at this point, we are exactly one hour away from the next physical milestone that needs to be completed prior to dragon endeavors return to earth. Those activities will begin with claw separation. The claw is what connects the umbilicals, the power, telemetry, the fluids between the dragon capsule and its trunk. The shield inpose preparation for dragons reentry into the atmosphere, we need to jettison the trunk. It will disintegrate upon reentering the earths atmosphere itself. Once we separate that, we are called step into what is flew to deorbit attitude. Thats maneuvering the capsule into position to perform the deorbit burn. We deorbit burn is where fire the four draco thrusters located at the top of the capsule near the forward hatch. We call those the forward bulkhead draco thrusters. Those will be utilized to perform the deorbit burn. That will last about 11 and a half minutes. That deorbit burn will place dragon in its final trajectory to the exact landing location. That will be 11 and a half minutes long. After the burn complete, we want to close the nosecone and lock it up. That is where the forward hatch is located and since these capsules are designed to be reusable, we want to protect the thrusters and that hatch because that is the hatch where the astronauts exit and enter the capsule when they are going in and out of the International Space station. Once we have the nosecone locked and in place, we begin to enter earths atmosphere. Burnacex for deorbit brief. Go ahead. First off for timing, showing no changes. Your tablet and onboard times for your timeline are within one minute or less of ground estimates. Copy. Copy. [indiscernible] within a minute. Countdown on your timeline should be within a few seconds, so looking pretty good. For the vehicle, endeavor is looking great for reentry. In the com during not ms ok and we are endeavor is in good shape. As far as recovery goes, go navigator is just about in position. Within a few kilometers. The Recovery Team is go at this time. Go for recovery. Copy. Recoveryick go back, has arrived. They are on station. Im looking at the water video from go navigator and it looks like last. It is awesome. Latest splashdown forecast is wins at 2. 15 knots. The waves at less than one foot in six seconds. Copy. Copy. Wins, waves, and weather. , waves, and weather. There we heard the deorbit briefing. This is the opportunity that that is all weve got for the burn brief. We will talk to you before the orbit sequence starts. Copy. Correction there, we will have the go no go shortly. That will be next up. Ok. Saying, the burn briefing there, just making sure everyone is on the same page. Primaryb and dougs role during reentry is to monitor telemetry, timing and data, it is important to make sure that there onboard timers most recentith the trajectory simulations we have generated here at Mission Control. That was just making sure that their sequence of events was lining up with what we are seeing down here in Mission Control. There. Lly good stuff we also heard the recovery vessel, go navigator, is in position. It is ready and waiting for splashdown. Which, like i said before, will be occurring at 11 48 pacific, 18 48 universal. We are just under two hours from that happening. I dont know about you, but as we are stepping into these checks, we did the leak check and a couple of com checks, we are talking about deorbit burn, my heart is starting to go. It is starting to feel real. We are waking back up and it is time to bring these guys home. The water looks like glass from the ship use thats exactly the kind of thing we want to hear. The wind has picked up a tiny bit to 2. 15 knots, a little under 2. 6 miles an hour, so well within our margins of what we were looking for for acceptable splashdown weather. Right now in the room behind us and in Mission Control houston, teams are doing a final no no go. That should wrap up in the next couple of minutes and we will hear them call that to the crew members when they get the go to do the deorbit burn. They will be doing the other activities prior to that, including the claw and trunk separation and adding ourselves ready for the burn and things will definitely start picking up in the next couple of minutes, really the next hour is where things start to happen. We do have a couple of moments now to be joined by a special guest. Dragon, spacexs go for the deorbit burn and burn has been enabled. Orbit earn. Go for we just heard it. That means the spacex and nasa teams are go for deorbit burn. Still a bit of a ways off, just under one hour from now, starting for that 11 and a half minute burn. But for now, we are go for deorbit burn and return of bob and doug. We will send it over to the Johnson Space center real quick where Courtney Beasley is standing by with nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine in houston. Courtney . Thanks, dan. Joining me is nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine. Jim, thank you for joining us today. For ourhistoric day agency, returning humans to earth in a commercially bill and operated spacecraft built and operated spacecraft. How is this paving the way for the future . Mr. Bridenstine it is establishing a Business Model for the future. I am wearing my artemis shirt. When we go to the moon, we will go with commercial partners. Nasa, we do not want to purchase, owned, and operate the hardware like we used to. A customerbe among many customers in the commercial marketplace. We want there to be numerous providers competing against each this cycle ofg Economic Development and capability. That is what todays return is going to represent. This is the next era in human spaceflight. Nasa gets to be a customer. Customer, be a great a great partner, but we do not want to be the only one operating with humans in space. How are nasas efforts on the station contributing to life back on earth . When we thinke about the International Space station, it is focused on how we do transformational activities that benefit human life here on earth. Certainly, when we think about advanced materials, industrialized biomedicine, these are things we are developing every day. Some examples would include, as far as advanced materials, very thin materials like an artificial retina for the human macular so someone with degeneration might not have to lose their eyesight in the future. We can only do that in the microgravity of space. That is one of many examples. Only think about how we compound pharmaceuticals, how we create immunizations for things like salmonella and other diseases, these are capabilities that are available to us because of the resource that is microgravity. Advanced materials, like fiberoptic cables, are things that we think there is a marketplace for the future. We are doing commercial resupply of the International Space station. As of today, when bob and doug come home safely, we will be doing commercial crew to the space station. The next thing we need is commercial space stations themselves. To create the market for commercial space stations, we need to transformational capabilities that come from the microgravity environment and that is what we are developing now. Day foru know, a big nasa today, but how about a big week . This week alone, we launched mars 2020, the artemis stage adapter was delivered, and we are completing the first commercially crude mission to the international commercially crewed mission to the International Space station. Nasas budgete right now is the highest it has ever been and nominal dollars. The budget request that trump gave us in the house and senate right now is 25. 2 billion. About sustaining capabilities like commercial crew, commercial resupply of capabilities so that the United States can stay the preeminent spacefaring nation. It is why we created the Artemis Program to go to the moon sustainably with partners, to use the resources of the moon to live and work for long periods of time, and take all of that knowledge onto mars. As you mentioned on thursday, we mission,another mars the most sophisticated robot nasa has ever developed, right now on his way to mars. We can prove that we can turn the Carbon Dioxide atmosphere of mars to pure oxygen. We are looking for life on another world. We are looking for signs of ancient life on mars. We are talking about microbial life, but life nonetheless. This is really a bright moment for nasa. I want to be clear, though. We need support from our members of congress in the house and senate. We need to be able to get that when he 5. 2 billion budget we to get that 25. 2 billion budget we requested. I am talking to members of Congress Every day. We are in great shape, but in order to stay number one in the world, we need the resources the president requested. Jim, thank you for joining us today. Such an exciting day. It, both nasassed and spacex are a gopher deorbit burn. We will send it back for hawthorne for the latest. Thank you. Great to hear from the administrator. We are in the final stretch. It feels great to beer. Great to be here. It certainly does. Dragon has a series of steps to complete before returning bob and doug home. As you heard us talk so far this morning, dragon will maneuver to the correct altitude and jettison its trunk, which is the cylindrical, unpressurized part of the assembly. Heated to expose the shield to expose the capsule for atmospheric reentry. Have a nice view of bob and doug in their suits. This is the first time we have seen them in their suits and chairs this morning. There they are tapping away, preparing to initiate the deorbit sequence. Justwas going to say, leading up into the last couple of minutes, we had leak checks. Once the leak checks or complete, they do not keep the suit pressurized. Their visors are open. Just getting ready for the ride. The external temperature will reach about 3500 degrees. High. Degrees fahrenheit. Of systems inle place to keep it cool and comfortable for bob and doug as they are returning. Like dan said, there will be cool air flowing through their suits. The cabin itself will be purged with cooler air as well. That will assist in making sure the temperature stays temperate in the capsule. We are just 42 minutes and 50 seconds away from things really kicking up. This is going to be when we really start to do that first maneuver to get ready to jettison the trunk. Then we will do that claw and trunk separating. Then it is time for that final firing of those engines, that downhill ride. Those forward bulkhead thrusters. There are four of them, for those draco thrusters four of those draco thrusters. They will be used to do the deal orbital burn. It will give the dragon its final trajectory. This is the last burn the capsule will perform. There have been a number completed. This deorbit burn will be the final one. It will last 11. 5 minutes. After that is complete, we no longer need to utilize those draco thrusters. We close the nosecone and lock it up. We are expecting that to happen about 20a. M. Pacific, minutes, 25 minutes math on air is hard 25 minutes after that, the capsule will enter the earths atmosphere, approaching about 3500 degrees. And that is because we are in that heat of reentry. That is where we will have that comms blackout. We have a twitter question that is germane. Stephen asks will you be able doug . Rack bob and it is kind of a mix. We will not be able to talk to them. We will not have true limit tree driven tracking have telemetry driven tracking, but we will know where their orbits will be. We have this calculated. It has gotten fine tuned as we have done those burns. We will know exactly where they are supposed to be even though we cannot communicate with them during that time. Even though we will not be able to send or receive signals or command or telemetry, dragon is designed to be autonomous. So there is really nothing to be worried about. Functionougs primary at that point is to monitor the telemetry they see on their screens and to stay comfortable. Through the are initial injury, we will have that part called entry interface, which we kind of explained. Ist is when the capsule experiencing a aerodynamics. They have been traveling in space with no lift, drag, things like that. This is when they hit the atmosphere and it starts affecting the capsule. Exactly. Here come the parachutes. Am pacific, we will be deploying the parachutes. They are utilized for a couple of reasons. One, to continue to further decelerate the vehicle, and also to stabilize it. Like dan said, it will be experiencing some of those aerodynamic pressures, so we want to make sure the capsule is stable before we deploy the main parachutes. Will bein chutes deploying and there will be four of them. It takes a couple seconds for them to fully inflate. It might look a little funny at first, but we assure you they are working properly, and it just takes a couple seconds for the air to catch in them and for them to fully explain and to their fully expand to their large, round or shape. After that, it takes only 3. 5 minutes for doug and bob to splash down. Our splashdown location is off the western coast of florida. We are aiming for a location near pensacola. Our recovery vessel, go navigator, is in location, ready and waiting for splashdown. They will be waiting about three monocle miles three nautical miles away from that point. We got a call that a nasa airplane is in the air. We have seen a couple brief spurts of video. That is the airborne asset we will have. It is a highaltitude Research Plane that nasa flies. It is outfitted with a number of imaging cameras. The main one we will be seeing is an infrared one. The demo oned splashdown, which i am sure you did, this is actually a glimpse of that camera. We will be getting this back. Time acquire at the same we did for demo one, we were able to see the capsule while it was still in atmospheric reentry. It was this really bright light that all of a sudden lit up the sky. To hopefullyhat see during the entry and the initial parachute deploying. We will have the boat that will get a couple more views of dragon as it delivers bob and doug safely to the ocean. As you can hear, all of this will be happening in rapid succession. On your screen now, we can see, closest to the camera, we have doug hurley, nasa astronaut. He is the pilot or the commander for this mission. Right, thata to the is astronaut bob behnken. We are very finally looking forward to bringing our space Veterans Home this morning. Thatwe mentioned before, will be happening in about an hour and a half, targeting 18 48 universal time. Clawction begins at the separation milestone, which is set for 30 minutes from now. 38 minutes from now. We are continuing to take questions through twitter using the asknasa. Our question comes from f1 fanatic. Dead astronauts need to have face masks down during reentry do astronauts need to have face masks down during reentry . During reentry . Those face masks or visors need to be lowered and locked during the reentry period. We need the spacesuit to be fully enclosed during the more dynamic elements of operations, and certainly the reentry period is one of them. Actually, at one point during the deorbit burn preparation phase, we will actually hear communication between ground station, ground here at Mission Control at spacex, to bob and doug just to confirm that those visors are in place. Our next question comes to us from philip. Where are the parachutes store before deployment . Into separateored compartments on the dragon spacecraft, on a side of the vehicle that has a deployable panel. The parachutes are stored up by the upper part, called the upper bulkhead. They are deployed by two motors, mortars. Just further down the panel, kind of at the base of the spacecraft, is where the main parachutes are stored. Those get drawn out. They are in place to make sure if thee forest that first set do not fire, you have a backup to get these deployed. One out of two in the last several months in the lead up to the mission, the parachutes obviously a critical part of reentry. This is something that is very meticulously packed and documented before the start of any mission. Nasa assisting spacex, we have the parachutes are stored under deployable planners and we will see them fire under deployable panels and we will see them fire open. Are locatedels above and below the side hatch panel. If you are looking at the dragon capsule, the anchor point for those parachutes will ensure that the side hatch will effectively be as far away from the Ocean Surface as possible, ensuring that we are able to expedite the process of egress seeing egressing bob and doug. Our next comes from scott. What are the tablets on their legs used for . What kind of devices are they . They are using ipads on board. They are really, essentially, user manuals. They are able to dial up different procedures, checklists, things they are looking for rather flight. Suits. Lcro them to their just like the main displays in front of them, they are touchscreen enabled and they have the touchscreen capable gloves in their suits. It is really just another information source. Dragon does not have the big paper manuals that we were used to in the shuttle era, things like that. Just kind of streamlining everything as much as possible. Absolutely. Like we mentioned before, this is a demonstration mission. Bob and dougs job here is to make everything work make sure everything is working as it should be. Simply paying attention, especially when there is a lot going on dynamically around you, can be tough. They will essentially be responsible for monitoring all the data and telemetry being received onscreen. Part of the debriefing that will happen once they get back on land is, quite simply, was there anything that happened in reality that you are not expecting or differed from what you were instructed would occur . So making sure that, in the future, fully Operational Missions that we have starting one, that those are fully prepared and we make those construction manuals that they do have those instruction manuals that they do have access to as perfect as possible. It is essential that they have correct information and that the crew is informed and aware of all the operations that are going on, regardless of whether or not they are not no ones necessarily commanding, because the vehicles are autonomous, but that they do know what is going on. From stan. I wanted to know if bob and doug can listen to this basics e spacex webcast in the capsule. One thing that makes us geek out is that the crew members on ford the space station usually get nasa tv pumped in whenever their friends are doing a launch. Chris, if you are watching, high. Hi. Great question. Another. Does the dragon capsule have windows . Absolutely. What are my favorite stte pictures doug hurley has posted favorite pictures doug hurley has posted on instagram today is a picture of what he can see outside the window. There is a window outside the side hatch. C will provide visual onformation that reentry is happening. Confirmation that reentry is happening. They will be able to see that from the windows themselves. It will be quite the fireworks show. Joe wants to know does the dragon capsule have netflix . [laughter] another important question. The answer to that is no. Were in the center screen, have the ground tracking map. As you can see, actually it is hard to make out, but dragon is cresting the Atlantic Ocean, approaching what looks like england and ireland. It will be crossing over into europe soon. The righte left into of that ground track screen, there are the telemetry screens. That will be the interface they use during the deorbit burn. That is what they will essentially used to make sure everything is working good and performing optimally. That is the same map we have been looking at. They are looking at a lot of the same data that we are trying to get you guys down here on the ground. Just where they are over the earth. It can be a little disorienting to look out the window and figured out quickly. They can see how far along on their orbit they are, where those milestones are coming up. They are in a monitor mode and they are locked and loaded to jump in if required. Our next question is from a sevenyearold. Why is the dragon capsule cone shaped . For a very specific reason. Figureey were trying to out the most efficient way to reenter the earths aptness fear atmosphere, both from handling the trajectory wings aving starting over. When they were trying to figure out how to best shape a spacecraft to efficiently and ter thevely reen atmosphere in the safest configuration, they decided on a cone or capsule shaped. Drawingse initial where you can find all manner of space put into wind tunnels, but at the end of the day, back in the early days of spaceflight, they were able to determine that the capsule shape is the most efficient. That shape dissipates the heat the best, is the easiest to control, and is the safest option. Dynamics have not changed since the 60s. That is why you still see a lot of capsule shaped spacecraft. It is really just for reentering an atmosphere. Good question. There on your screen, again, we have live shots coming from dragon endeavor as it is making its way back toward earth. We are approaching the final steps of the day of the mission, in fact. Pacific, 18 18 a. M. 18 18. M. , excuse me , excuse me, p. M. , de orbit burn initiation. Dragon on a final trajectory to a specific landing location. We determined the best one for todays reentry to be off the coast of florida near pensacola. Vessel go navigator is in police, ready and waiting. Is in place, ready and waiting. It seems like bob and doug are comfortable. They are in their spacesuits. The leak check has been performed. We got a call that it was nominal, so everything good there. The visors are in the open position. They will be closed when we get to the dynamic portion. Check my timeline. Minutes awayut 24 from things really picking up. When they will separate the trunk. Eight minutes after that, we will start to deorbit burn. That will be the longest burn of dragons return journey. The latest timeline we got headed lasting for we got had it lasting for about 11 minutes. It will be the last firing of those forward bulkhead dracos. S, the four as we said before, that deorbit burn is what commits them to returning to home. When that happens, it that capsule happens, that capsule enters essentially a collision course with earth. We have a few more minutes. We still have questions coming in. Over onave one, jump twitter, use the asknasa. This comes from scared survivor. Lose satellite or Ground Communications during reentry . The answer is everything. Up aroundsma builds the spacecraft, it prevents signals being transmitted or received by dragon. Satellites and ground stations that it will not be able to communicate with. But dragon continues flying itself. We know its orbit is plotted out we know where its orbit where its orbit is plotted out to be. We will not be able to hear from bob and doug until they are on the others that. Then we will reestablish communication with dragon. We have another. They wanted to know how many seats are in dragon. There are actually four c chairs. Four chairs. Currently targeted for september, we have another mission. Bob and doug are occupying only two of them. We will be utilizing all four of those in future missions, but as of right now, i believe it was on the launch portion of the mission, one of those seats was occupied by tremor, who, if you have been following along, is voted onned dinosaur douge two sons of bob and as what should be the zero g indicator. Tremor was strapped into a seat during a scent and when they got the ok to release him, he started floating into the capsule. All right. Just another time check. We are a little over 20 minutes from the start of our deorbit burn sequencing starting. We are looking at that to really pick up at about 10 48. Will start getting into the attitude for trunk separation. We start executing a bunch of steps that will come in. Looking forward to those. It will be quite the journey. With respect to the deorbit burn, bob and doug will remain in their seats and strapped in for the entire duration. They will not be exiting those seats until they are able to egress, or exit, the capsule after it has splashed down and be covered down and been recovered out of the ocean and resting safely in the nest of the recovery vessel. Our question is from brett. What is the orientation of the astronauts when seated . Today face the front or the top of the capsule, and do they find a comfortable . Theye view we just had, were in the reclined position. They were facing towards the top of the capsule. During the launch portion, when they were getting into the capsule in late may, the seats were actuated in the down position, where they were facing toward the hatch. The angle of difference is about 40 degrees between the two positions. They actuate in order to make gse that whenever there are being experienced, it is in the most comfortable and safely ergonomic way possible. That is where actuation comes in handy. Also helps them to come them to get in and out of the capsule. It is trickier when theyre reclined, facing upward toward the capsule. Level, i havefort heard they have found it comfortable. The seats are custom fitted for each astronaut destined to be flying in it. Whenever a crew member is assigned to a mission, they will also be assigned a seat specifically. Midflight fireo drills where everybody is switching seats. Everybody has a designated c. Small,e essentially medium, and large, and the ,rmrests are also customizable depending on how long the crewmembers forearm is. We take comfort in mind, as well as style. Of the customtion fit of the suit as well as the custom fit of the seats, we have aimed to make it as comfortable as possible in the event of some sort of situation where we need to wave off activity for up to 48 hours. That is a long time to be in a confined space, even if you are highly trained like these guys. So making sure they are as comfortable as possible in the cabin was a high priority. The next question comes from richard. This deals with hygiene. How did the astronauts stay so cleancut . I know there is not a barber on board. Today shower . Do they shower . They do have to cut their own hair. Famously Chris Cassidy shaved his own here once when to arrive. Was about trimmers in the space station with vacuums attached. Hair would float around and get board,in the drafts on so they basically use vacuum cutters to give themselves air cut. That is how they do it. Hey are able to make do a time check here. We just passed 10 30 here in california. We are less than 20 minutes away from our first event here on our t as bob and doug begin to continue to check off the boxes of their return home. That first event is claw separation, the initiation of trunk jettisoned. All that means is that we will need to unlatch the claw from the trunk, the mechanism that holds and connects the trunk to the capsule, delivers fluid, telemetry, power. We need to expose the trunk in order for the capsule to deorbit. We will jettison the trunk and begin a deorbit burn. That is slated to begin at 10 56 a. M. Pacific, 18 56 universal coordinated time. So in just under 20 minutes we are expecting thats a start. That to start. Once again, if youre just joining us, we have live views inside the dragon endeavor capsule. Bob and doug in the inside their in there,ob and doug inside their seats, as they begin the deorbit sequence. And dougb Hurley Hurley and bob behnken. These are two incredibly wonderful humans. We affectionately call them our space dads here at spacex. It is an honor to be able to fly them. Doug hurley was the pilot of the final Space Shuttle mission, s ts135, back in 2011. When i heard he was assigned to becausesion, i cried just having the opportunity to return the pilot of that final mission to the space station in this capacity was, is, so cool. I grew up following this mission. Since the moment we started training for here in hawthorne. We know that they are ready. They have done all of their suit checkouts, everything to get themselves to this point, and once we begin these events, they are going to keep a very close, again, the crew is always in the loop to step in, but dragon theseto be executing maneuvers and separation events automatically via a preprogrammed timeline. We are continuing to count down. We will have our first maneuver in a little under 13 minutes or a little over 15 minutes from the claw separation. That clock connecting the Service Module to the that claw connecting the service , cutting off trunk the fluid and data paths between the two. A few seconds later, they will separate. We will then be less than five seconds away from that deorbit burn. Deorbit burn expected to last 11 minutes and 22 seconds. Now, of course, during reentry, bob and doug will be experiencing a couple gs, anticipated about 4gs during reentry. [no audio] headquarters in hawthorne, california. Because it will be difficult for them to maybe flip through to the exact part of the procedure they want to review during the reentry event itself, they are reviewing those now in preparation for that splashdown the reentry sequence. We have another twitter question. The dragon orn does it sound like an airplane . It does not sound like an airplane, at least right now. As they fly through the vacuum of space, there is none of that rushing air. They will get that further down during their descent. Also be able to hear when the draco thrusters fire. One of the things they have been able to do when they trained the ofw, they put a number cameras in the cabin, and they were able to record what it sounded like during the major burns, the launch, everything. The trainers here at spacex headquarters have speakers set up. As they are doing simulations or practice runs of different phases of the mission, they are able to hear what it should sound like inside dragon as they are going through that. That is one thing bob pointed out. One of the things they are looking for is does this sound like i expected it to . Is that a light i am supposed to see . All of these Different Things that, for them, it is like a reflex by the time they have trained this much. All right, well, at this moment, we are less than 10 minutes away from the sequence starting. Were just about nine minutes away, in fact. First, we will see that maneuver where we will get into the proper attitude, or point dragon in the right direction, for a claw and trunk separation. We will do a 90 degree llama maneuver to make sure the trunk goes out and away 90 degree yaw maneuver to make sure the trunk goes out and away from the capsule. Then dragon will position itself for the deorbit burn. It will point those bulkhead rosters in the direction it is currently traveling. This is called a retrograde maneuver, done specifically we are going to slow the capsule down, but, more than anything, orare changing the perigee the lowest point of the movement. Pointing it to that spot in the gulf. Eight minutes, kate. We are getting close. [no audio] dragon spacex for deorbit sequence. Go ahead. All right, doug, we are five minutes out from the orbit sequence start. In addition, i want to inform you we are expecting some during deorbit due to vehicle orientation. Ok, copy. Good read back. We are almost four minutes away. We just heard the call out from spacex here at Mission Control. We are five minutes away from deorbit sequence start. Like we mentioned before, that deorbit sequence will involve separating from the trunk and performing the deorbit burn. As you may have noticed on the ground tracking map we have been showing you before, bob and doug were in their last orbit around earth. I cannot remember what the number was reported earlier, dan, but they have done thousands of orbits around earth during their two month duration on station. It is really exciting that the line we see on that trajectory map is no longer fully around it. They are coming home. Their final orbit of planet earth. 1024th orbit since they launched in may. We are three minutes away from the first maneuver. That will be a salute, as you , asd that will be a slew you heard doug mention. So we can deb jettison that trunk so we can jettison that trunk. 32 seconds and counting. This is where things pick up. This is where we really commence coming home. We are in the final stages of bob and dougs trip in outer space. Pretty soon, we will be seeing them in the gulf of mexico. They continue to monitor data and telemetry in the vehicle. Dragon is doing a couple things itself to prepare for the deorbit sequence. It is doing these things autonomously. It is isolating the thermal control system loop from the radiator. This is a system that will help keep bob and doug cool while they are reentering the atmosphere. The external temperature will reach 3500 degrees fahrenheit in that thermal control system helps keep them cool during that time. Is initiating the separation of the claw mechanism, which will terminate the data, the power, and the fluid connections between the capsule and the trunk. Right now, the vehicle is preparing to execute that. We are anticipating execution of claw separation in three minutes and 35 seconds. So, you know, we have been here for 10 hours i think at this point. The webcast as a whole has been going on for almost 24 hours. We are in the final moments here. Dragon is beginning its journey home, to bring bob and doug back to earth. This is the moment that dragon is in a position to start coming home. The Recovery Team is already on station, have been for a while, off the coast of pensacola. We are less than a minute from starting these carefully cori choreographed sequences. Then we bring them home. We are just 30 seconds away now from maneuvering dragon to get rid of that claw, and then that trunk separation. There will be a 35 second jump from separating the claw to separating the trunk. We will keep our eyes on the ground tread for you and make sure we get an exact location of when these separation events are occurring. We are looking for the claw and the trunk to separate cleanly and then it will be less than five minutes to the deorbit burn. After that deorbit sequence start. Great news. Copy. Draco right, so the thrusters on dragon starting to fire. Way over to the trunk jettison attitude. That should be about two minutes away from the claw separation. For those of you that are just tuning in, youre just in time. At this point in the mission, we are beginning to execute the final steps of dragon endeavors return to earth. We are performing the claw separation slew, which means dragon is maneuvering itself into position, into the proper attitude, to separate the dragon trunk. That will be initiated by separation of the claw. The claw is a mechanism that attaches the trunk and excuse me, in the capsule together. And the capsule together. It delivers power, telemetry, and fluids. We need to expose the heat shield. Right now, the trunk is blocking that, so we will jettison the trunk. Allow ushen it will to maneuver into the proper attitude to perform the deorbit burn, which dragon has performed a number of burns so far, overnight and early this morning. This will be the final burn the icle has to perform fro for this mission. Dragon is in the trunk separation attitude. We are standing by for claw separation. We just heard confirmation. With the claw separated, we are now standing by for the trunk separation in less than 30 seconds. 10 seconds till trunk separation. We just heard confirmation of trunk separation. Comingtrunk separation in at 10 52 a. M. Pacific with dragon flying over the indian ocean, just to the west of australia. Spacex, we showed nominal trunk jettison. We copy. All right. So the crew just got the call. Nominal trunk separation. That is exactly what we were looking for. Next will be that deorbit burn. Again, the longest burn of their trip home. The longest firing of those thrusters into the last time we are using those forward all caps thrusters. Those thrusters are what we are using to perform the deorbit burn. Willwe do that, that burn last for 11. 5 minutes. Once that is completed, we do not need to use those thrusters and, so we will close and lock those thrusters anymore, so we will close and lock the nosecone for rear entry. Reentry. We are under three point five minutes from the deorbit burn. We were able to separate that claw at 10 51 a. M. Pacific. Gmt. 17 51 the trunk separating will dragon was flying to the west of australia while dragon was flying to the west of australia. Running now, dragon is exclusively on battery power. Telemetry is looking good for the vehicle. The system is primed for cabin and sue cooling. Exposed. Shield is air system, which is the that we breathe every day here on earth, nitrogen, oxygen mixture, the same stuff they put in your scuba tank if you are a scuba diver. The system is used to cool the cabin and the suit to keep the crew comfortable during their entry phase. They will actually have cold air flowing through their suits themselves as well as through the cabin itself. So a twopronged approach to maintaining a comfortable temperature there inside the capsule. The next events we have coming up will be the deorbit burn, which we are expecting that to commence in one minute and 40 seconds. According to the ground tracking map there, dragon is approaching the southwestern approach southwestern coast of australia. Less than a minute. We are excited. We are inside a minute to deorbit burn. One more time, this is the long one. This is expected to last 11 minutes, 22 seconds. This is that burn that commits the dragon to reenter into the earths atmosphere. You can get a sense of just how far they are going to go. By the time they fired this burn, they will be just to the southwest of australia. This will realign their orbit to intersect with that point off the coast of pensacola where they will be splashing down. This is the moment where dragon is fully committed to the reentry point. Again, we are aiming just up the coast of pensacola, florida. Our recovery ship, go navigator, is ready and waiting to begin the Recovery Process right after splashdown occurs. We are in the final steps of the deorbit sequence. The deorbit burn will be starting in just a couple of seconds. We heard confirmation that deorbit burn has begun, coming at 10 56 a. M. Pacific. Aft just offpacecr the coast of australia, so here we go. 11 more minutes. I am ready and i am sure it is safe to say bob and doug are ready. They have done a number of erviews o in the last interviews in the last few weeks while on station and the excitement for the mission is palpable. Being able to fly these two incredible humans to the International Space station and back is such an honor and we are excited to get our space dads home safely and back to their families as quickly as possible. This deorbit burn we are currently in will last 11 minutes and 22 seconds. A little more than 10 and counting. 10 minutes to go. Propulsion system performing nominally. That is the word we always want to hear, always like to hear. Minutes to go in this burn. All within the last 10 minutes. It seems like we had a slow progress of events all morning, and then within the last few minutes we had a couple things happening. Dragon maneuvered itself into the appropriate position to jettison its trunk. Successfully, nominally, and then initiated the deorbit burn a couple minutes ago. This deorbit burn is the last lastbefore forward the time to four forward draco thrusters will fire. This deorbit burn is what will line the vehicle up input put it on itsd final trajectory. They are keeping tabs on the firings, and, until thatdetails burn terminates. All they really have to do is stay strapped in in their seats and keep tabs on things. While this is completing we are a few minutes in. And 22 last 11 minutes seconds. We have a couple more events coming up afterward in let me check my timeline. Just under 44 minutes we will have the initial parachute deployment. That is when we will deploy the parachutes designed to further slow down the capsule as it is reentering the atmosphere and stabilizing it. A minute after that we will deploy the other parachutes. A couple of minutes after that we will have splashdown. In 44 minutes. Performing deo rbit burn. The only performance call is everything is still looking good on dragon. Once this completes we will have a couple of minutes, about three minutes, to catch our breath before things pick back up and we get the nosecone. There will be a gap and they will maneuver dragon to into the altitude and line of velocity. That heatshield will protect them from the heat of reentry. Temperatures gp