The nasa Space Shuttle atlantis crew 1 mission blasted off from historic pad 39a with four astronauts. Americans mike hopkins, victor glover, shannon walker, and japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi. We have a great group of people to talk about the crew 1 mission in this postlaunch press conference and talk about the many historic elements of this historic launch. Joining us today is nasa administrator jim bridenside, kathy leader, nasa headquarters, Vice President and director general of jaxas human space Flight Technology directorat. Steve dixson, administrator of the f. A. A. , and gwenn, president and chief operating officer of spacex. In the moment well hear the opening remarks. And then well take questions from the media. So lets start with administrator jim bridenstein. Thank you. Another historic night. And i want to congratulate the nasa team and the spacex team for an amazing job yet again. So the big milestone here is that we are now moving away from development and tests and into operational flights. And in fact, this operational flight was licensed by the f. A. A. So this is a truly a commercial launch vehicle and were grateful to our partners at spacex for providing it and our partners at the f. A. A. For licensing it. And im also grateful to our partners with japan. And search hiroi whos with us today, you should know the japan is an amazing partner for the United States of america. We are exceptionally grateful that japan would join us on crew 1. And so this is a great day for the United States of america and a great day for japan. And we look forward to many more years of a great partnership, not just in low earth orbit but all the way to the moon. Were just really excited with how well it went today and look forward to answering any questions. Kathy . Yeah. I am pi i cannot tell you, thank you, gwen. Its been quite a journey for the team thats been out here and working so hard. This is really an amazing day for us. I cant tell you. Im just like pretty choked up a little bit thinking about, you know, the folks that have spent years of their lives getting ready for this mission. And being able to see the crew fly today was just phenomenal. You know, weve talked a lot about firsts. And this mission is an example of multiple firsts for us. Of partnership across agencies with the feya, obviously f. A. A. , fcc, a partnership across our international partners. And having, you know, the an example and having soichi on the flight is just an amazing experience for us. But most of all, its a partnership with spacex. And our commercial partners. And you know, leaving the team over there in the firing room, everybody is is so fired up. Theyre so excited about this mission. But were not done yet. We need to keep going. That spacecraft is out there with those four precious grew members on them. And were going to get them safely to the International Space station tomorrow, right . But it was a beautiful launch today. And really excited and thank you. First of all, on behalf of jaxa, accept my appreciation to all staff who engaged in the launch operations during the covid19 situations. The mission is still ongoing, but launch success first. I have seen lots of i havent seen lots of launches, but it the first time to see the launch of falcon 9. It was very beautiful and it was even more impressive considering that full crew four crew members, including jaxa search. On board. Its very significant for jaxa had a [inaudible] both the first operational flight of crew dragon. And from Kennedy Space center. I believe that this is the outcome of the cooperation between nasa and jaxa. And jaxa including the astronauts Soichi Noguchi have been highly by the partners. The variety of activity on the iss and activities using microgravity environment and the technology for the future. Jaxa and nasa working on the frame of japan u. S. Open Platform Partnership program to achieve results through the mutual use of experimentals and far deepen the cooperation between japan and u. S. In july the main street of education cultures, sports, science, and technology of japan and nasa signed a joint exploration declaration of intent for lunar cooperation. I believe the human space activities will expand from the iss to the moon. I am looking forward to enjoying the new era and going together for the future. Once again, congratulations on the successful launch. On behalf of 45,000 Aerospace Professionals at the f. A. A. , it is truly an honor and a privilege. This is a big night for many of us. And its a big night for the f. A. A. But i first want to offer my congratulations. Hart felt congratulations to jim heartfelt congratulations to jim and the nasa team, jaxa of course, our japanese partners, and the spacex team led by elon musk and gwen shotwell. The energy in the room is pallable. And it is a tremendous palpable and it is a tremendous accomplishment for our country and for humankind as we begin the next significant step towards the commercialization in this case of low earth orbit. This launch is another major milestone in space transfor knows transportation. Its a lot of hard work from a lot of people in government and industry, all working closely together. Its also the first f. A. A. Licensed osh blittal orbital human space light launch. Our job in this mission is to protect public safety, property, and national security. And weve done that. Well continue to work with the commercial space industry and nasa to ensure that we continue to meet these priorities. And well continue our efforts to help make the Aerospace System more flexible and dynamic so we can support the exact expected increase in Space Operations in the coming years. As a matter of fact, i received a text from our command center just outside washington, d. C. , that we released the airspace for commercial traffic within 20 minutes of the launch. And we continue to to refine our capabilities there. So its a pleasure to be with you tonight and again, congratulations to everyone on a successful start to a great mission. Ga web . Thanks gwen . Thanks. Im thrilled to be here today. I want to make sure i get all the thank yous. Thanks to nasa to start with for the partnership that weve had. This journey began really in august of 2006 when we first started working on dragon and fallon 9 together. So thank you for your partnership. Kathy, weve been working together for quite some time. Since then, actually, from the beginning. I want to thank the 45th space wing, another Mission Partner here. I want to thank the f. A. A. , steve, appreciate all your support. And so sake san i wanted to thank you for both coming and participating but also for allowing soichi to fly on a dragon. I want to thank spacex employees who have worked tirelessly, hard and tirelessly through pretty extraordinary times. They continue to amaze me and im so proud of them. So i wanted to thank them for that as well. Could not be more proud of the of the work that weve all done together here today. Fallon 9 looked launched look beautiful. I dont have any specifics on any anomalies that we had which was great. Well get more data as we go. Dragon was dropped off roughly 12 minutes into the mission into a beautiful orbit. And shes operating just fine. All systems nominal. Executed a burn. And i think theres two more to go. We approach the space station in a little over 24 hours from now. And then well be able to breathe a sigh of relief. 26 or so hours from now, once we hand the crew over to nasa. In the next 15 months, we should be flying roughly seven Dragon Missions and this mission represents the initiation of a dragon in orbit continuously, knocking on wood. And certainly is really the beginning of a new era in human space flight. So thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you all. I know i can speak for millions who are excited to see these four astronauts on the crew dragon resilience and getting to the International Space station for the most important mission. Well take some questions. Our first question is from marsha dunn. Hello . Yes, marsha, we can hear you. Yes, great, hi for ms. Shotwell. Please. Im curious how wired in was elon and curious where he monitored all the action from. Thank you. So elon was tied in very closely to the launch. I have a series of texts to prove it. As usual, he regardless of where he is on the planet, he is watching closely and providing guidance and support. Great. Our next question comes from michael from cnbc. Hi. My first question is for gw ynne. Spacex has broken a new ceiling in doing something only countries had done before. How many other companies do you see entering the orbital human space flight in the decade . Im a horrible predictor. I never get it right. So i think what you can count on is what i say wont be right. Obviously we have we expect to have flights from boeing upcoming, but i dont think youre asking about the existing providers. I think youre talking about new ones. This is a tough business to break into. I wouldnt expect any in the next five years. But hopefully within 10 there will be plenty of folks doing this kind of work. To make it more accessible to more folks. Our next question comes from irk berger. Eric berger. Hi. Congratulations, everyone. Such a big night for human space flight. I think this is a question for kathy. But if someone else wants to take it, thats fine, too. Going back to yesterdays 24hour delay, its minding the primary driver of that was the fact that the drone ship couldnt get out of port due to Tropical Storm eta and i was wondering, a few years ago kathy, could you imagine you know, scrubbing or holding a launch for a day you know, to recover the first stage of a rocket . No. But you know, we were were also i think a few years ago werent looking at the cadence that we had in trying to be as Cost Effective on our Services Going forward, right . I also this has been a horrendous year for storms. I dont think if you would have had asked me a few years ago if we would have had, you know, five storms hit the louisiana coast and another set hit hitting florida in november, i would have been surprised, too. But you know, with the systems that we have, theres constraints and big choices and one of those choices was, we had a beautiful opportunity on sunday. And so that was a big part of the conversation. And us deciding to pick this day. Ended up not being that great a day around the launch time, so this was a great day. And it was a great launch. And it was it was an amazing experience. Yeah. It was a really incredible experience. And think all of us are still excited about seeing it our next question comes from irene from aviation week. Thanks, batina. Congratulations, everyone. My question is for gw ynne. 15 months, seven dragons, counting commercial faces and can you give us an update customer shall commercial i think the, aiom is on the books for the end of next year. Is there anything else . Thanks. So i believe we did count one commercial mission in there. But i dont want to do math ina3 public. I will call you if i got that one wrong. The well be well be flying the crew to crew 2 mission in about four and a half months. And then crew 3 roughly possibly six months later. We do hope to fly a commercial mission with, aiom. Axiom. And maybe some other fun missions which ill chat about later. [laughter] our next question comes from david curly. Kind of curious about what happened to your emotions when they had to reopen the hatch and can you explain to me the technology i think were all kind of used to a hatch closing. You crank the wheel and it sploased. It seems closed. It seems a little bit longer process. I dont understand what youve got going. But can you talk about the hatch and what happened . So im not sure i hard you. If youre asking i heard you. If youre asking about the doover on the hatch operation that we had today . We closed the hatch the first time. And the capsule did not pass its week checks. So we opened it and took a look at the seals. Did a found a little bit of fog. Cleaned that up. Adjusted the seals. And reclosed the hatch. And the dragon capsule passed its leak check. Okay. To make that operation a little smoother, but we got it done. Thank you. Our next question comes from jeff. Hi, question for either there were some alerts after crew dragon made it to orbit about the thermal control system. It looks like that was resolved but was that just a false alarm or was that an actual issue with the thermal control system that has since been corrected . Thanks. Whats amazing in the first hour of flight is all the systems are activated, right . And so the fault detection systems are working and what happened was it it hit a filter that kind of started that happens during system startups. And it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It flipped over to the second leg. We have a lot of redundancy in the system. And then the was able to go in and cleared the faults and both legs are back up and running. So this is not a very its not an unusual thing to happen when systems are started up like this. Its its we go through the launch and then we kind of hang out for that first hour of dragon activation, because it kind of amazing thing it goes through and checks out all the different parts of it and gives us a good health check for the way the spacecraft is working and like she said, dragon is flying beautifully right now. Thank you both. Our next question comes from joey roulette, reuters. Thanks, battina. Question for kathy. I wanted to follow up on that. Can you kind of give us a sense of what happened with the thermal control system and for g gw ynne. Can you give us a ballpark on how much youre in talks for launches and how much you are solidified. Theafntle. Sometimes its just thanks. Sometimes its just a sensor issue, right . And its just a startup sensor getting everything alignled. So actually nothing really happened to the system. It was kind of just a function of kind of running through and when you have all these checks and your system is doing all the checks, sometimes it will it will hit a limit and then flip over and then you reset the pieces of it and so actually it had to we have two good loops now. And the system is working great. So like i said, its just a little bit of a startup glitch. Thank you. Paul brinkman, ipi upi and our next reporter, paul . Yeah, thanks. Im really thinking about the astronauts in space now. And you know, four people trying to sleep after launching on a rocket. And flying around the earth on a new spacecraft. My understanding is the flight time tonight apparently was extended partly for their sleep time. And weve heard how important it is that they get proper sleep. But im thinking that must be kind of a challenge. So i guess, kathy, can you talk about how well astronauts sleep in space and is a it a really peaceful ride aboard dragon now . Is it cruising in orbit stlor a lightsout rule or a notalking rule . Yeah. Thanks. Well, you know, they do have little curtain that is they cover the windows and they curtains that they cover the windows and they get out of the suits and lay down. You have to realize, youre in zero g, too, right . So youre in a little bit different position. You know, these are experienced crew members and they know that theyve got to get their rest and work through them. And so the other reallyiate thing is you can watch really great thing is you can watch them because theres a lot of nasa coverage of the mission over this next 26 hours. So youll be able to see the crew during different activities. Not while theyre sleeping but doing other activities and so youll be able to watch along what they do. These folks know what theyre doing. Theyre very experienced. They know that they got to get their rest. So that they can do the sequence of events that are coming up for docking as safely as possible. Yeah. So it would be hard to sleep right now. I would be really excited. Theyre having a lot of fun. You need to watch them. They were this crew was theyre there and they were enjoying being in space again. Yeah. What an experience our next question comes from steven clark. Hi. Congratulations, steven clark from space flight now. I just wanted to clarify one thing, the seven Dragon Missions in the next 15 months i think you said. Did those include Cargo Missions or are those all Crew Missions . And also, i wanted to get an update on your crew dragon production line. How many crew dragons are currently being built . You have two that have launched now. Do you have any other crew dragons being assembled right now or will you be doing your nearterm missions with these two vehicles . Thanks. I was hedging. I did check my phone and the seven missions were all for nasa. Crs21 through 24 and three Crew Missions. But i was hedging just in case just in case one of those doesnt go to include a commercial mission between now and then. And then the other question you asked was second part . Oh, how many dragons in production. Thanks, steve. Do you want to [laughter] we have the demo 2 dragon is in the refurbishment process to fly crew 2. Dragon theres a dragon capsule theres also the crs21 capsule. I think theres two more cargo capsules after that. And well have three additional crew dragon capsules. I believe. And most theyre all to some extent in production right now. Okay. So our next question comes from david of business insider. Thank you for taking my question. Kathy, i understand this docking will be fully automated thats coming up. But is there anything any stuff youre particularly concerned about or will be watching closely. And gwen, you mentioned some anomaly data. Is there anything spacex and nasa saw during launch or are seeing in orbit that needs further investigating . Thanks. So the dragon is designed to have an automated docking. And right now all the systems have are working. And so were not expecting there to be any issues. With the docking. And obviously, you know, theyll be checking out the systems as they get near a space and they check all the different sensor suites and make sure that things are functioning. And then the crew is also trained on being able to do some kind of backup maneuvers, too. But right now were not expecting any issues and im sure docking tomorrow will go smoothly. All right. So one more question for hito. We know that this mission had a lot of great mile stones, not only is the it first crew rotation from a commercial space vehicle but also carrying the First International astronaut on this mission. What is next for jaxa in the future . Next we want to send astronaut hoddisha. On the crew dragon 2. He will i hope he will become the iss commander. Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, thats going were going to start wrapping up our this press conference. But before we do that, id like to turn it over to brian stein for closing remarks. I think what weve seen today is really remarkable. So much work by so many people over a sustained period of time. Again, thank you to spacex and ms. Shotwell and elon musk for being an amazing partner to new zealand for all of these years. I think its also important to recognize kathy leaders who was very involved in the commercial resupply program, which then kind of led to the development of a commercial crew program and of course, kathy has done amazing work through both of those programs getting us to where we are an as agency an agency now with commercial crew. And doing such an amazing job that we decided to put her in charge of all human space flights for nasa. So shes now responsible for getting us to the moon and on to mars. Basically Operational Missions where n. A. S. A. Is a customer. Of goal will be a customer many customers in a commercial market space, but we also want to have numerous providers competing on cost and innovations and safety. We have seen amazing work from spacex already. There is more coming from boeing. But i think this is consistent commit this very Virtuous Cycle of Continuous Development will pay benefits to the american taxpayer and space exploration. And as these missions go forward and we get more into the commercial aspects of it, the faa will continue to be a critical partner, and we are grateful to the leadership at the faa for licensing this launch and moving us forward as a nation into this new era of commercial manned spaceflight into orbital space. So many Amazing Things on this flight. As kathy said earlier, it is not over. This was a beautiful launch, and were all very excited about this launch, but remember, this is a sixmonth mission that is the first of many. We use the word operational. Make no mistake when you are flying interest is in the best when you are flying into space, there is always risk and you always need diligence. ,e are confident in spacex in our international partners,he faa, and boeing coming which will be exciting. I am very thrilled about how today went and i look forward to so many great things in the future. Stay with us come that we have lots of exciting news. We will be having live continuous coverage of our Nasa Television through docking which will happen at 11 p. M. Tomorrow and we will also have been welcome ceremony. All this information and lots more at nasa. Gov. You can watch the live broadcast on nasa tv. Thank you so much for joining us and have a good night. The nasa space six crew is due to arrive at the International Space station on monday. I will live coverage starts at approximately 11 00 p. M. Eastern when the dock with the iss, followed by an onboard welcoming ceremony and a postdocking news conference. 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