Nasa launch four astronauts aboard the space x dragon capsule to the International Space station on sunday. Afterwards, top officials at nasa and spacex held a News Conference on how the launch went and what is ahead for the mission. Thank you for joining us. Moments ago at 7 27 p. M. Nasa space x space x crew1 mission blasted off from Kennedy SpaceCenter Historic pad 39a with four astronauts. Americans, mike hopkins, victr glover, Shannon Walker and japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi today we are joined to have a great group of people to talk about thehe crew1 missionn this post conference and talk about them in historic elements of this historic launch. Joining us today is nasa jim bridenstine, kathy, associate administrator for operations, at nasa headquarters. Vice president and director general of jackson Human Spaceflight Technology directorate, steve dixon administrator of the federal aviation administration, faa and president and chief operating officer of spacex. Ar in a in a moment will through te opening remarks and then we will take questions from thes media. Lets start with administrator jim bridenstine. Thank you. Other historic night a want toto congratulate the nasa team and the space x team for an amazing job yet again. So the big milestone here is that we are now moving away from developmt and test and into operationallights and, in fact, this operational flight wa licensed by the faa. This is truly a commercial launch vehicle and we are grateful to our partners at spacex for providi and our partners at the faa for licensing it. Im also grateful to our partners with japan. You should know that japan is an amazing partner for the United States of america. We are exceptionally grateful that japan wouldoi join us on crew1 here so this is a great day foror the United States of american and a great date for japan, and we look forward to manyat more years of the Great Partnership notches in lowearth orbit but all the way to the moon. We are just really excited with how well it went today and i look for to answeringny i cannot tell you, and you, glenn. Its been quite a journey for the team that is been out here and working so hard. Physical and amazing day for us. I cant tell you. I am like a pretty choked up a little bit thinking about the folks that is that years of their lives getting ready for this mission and being able to see the crew flight today was just a nominal. You know, we have talked a lot about first, and this nation is an example of multiple firsts for us, partnership across agencies with faa obviously, first commercial mission, a partnership across her international partners, and having japanese as an example is just an amazing experience for us. But most of all as a partnership with spacex and a commercial partners. You know, leaving the team over there in the firing room and everybody is so fired up, so excited about this nation that we are not done yet. We need to keep going. That spacecraft is out there with those four precious crewmember on it andna will get them safely to the International Space station tomorrow, right . That it was a lunch today and really excited, and thank you. First of all, i would say my observation to all staff who engage in launch during covid19 [inaudible] the mission was ongoing but launch success first. I havent seen lots of it is first time to see launch. Tonight was a beautiful and it was even more impressive observing four crew members including Soichi Noguchi was on board. It is significant time for jaxa. The first operational flight crew dragon. From Kennedy Space center. I believe that this is outcome of the cooperation between nasa and jaxa. And jaxa including [inaudible] by the partners. Involved in activities on ice as and he we conduct science activities using environment and diversity technologies for future. Jaxa and thats our look at the framework of japanu. S. Open Platform Partnership program to achieve results for the need to use of experiment and would like to deeper cooperation between japan and u. S. In july the education culture, both sides and japan and nasa signed joint exploration declaration for lunar corporation. The human space activity really expands on the iss to the moon. I am looking forward to enjoy new era and going together with the future. Again, congratulations on successful launc will come on behalf of 45,000 aeroace professionals at the faa, it is truly an honor and a privilege. This is a big night for many of us and its a bigight for the faa. But i first want to offer my congratulations, heartfelt congtulations to jim and the nasa team, Hiroshi Sasaki and jaxa are japanese partners and the space x team led by elon musk and glenn shotwell. The energy in the room is palpable, and it is tremendous accomplishment for our country and for humankind as we begin the next significant step towards commercialization, in this case, of lowearth orbit. This launch is another major milestone in space transportation. Its the culmination of a lot of hard work from a lot of people in government and industry all working closely together. Its also the first faa licensed horrible human space flight launch. Our job in this mission is to protect the safety, property and national security, and we have done that. Well continue to work with commercial space industry and nasa to ensure that we continue to meet these priorities. And we will continue our efforts to make the Aerospace System more flexible and dynamic so we can support the expected increase in Space Operations in the coming years. As a matter of fact i received a text from our faa command center just outside washington, d. C. That we release the airspace for commercial traffic within 20 minutes of the launch. And we continue to refine our capabilities there. So its a pleasure to be with you tonight and a again congratulations to unsuccessful story to a great mission. Thanks, bettina. I am thrilled to be here today. I want to make sure i get all the thank yous. Thanks to nasa, to start with come for the partnership we have had. This journey began early in august 2006 when they first stted working on dragon and falcon 9s together. For youryou partnership. Kathy, weve been working together for quite som time. Since been actually from the beginning. Iant to thank t the 45th base wing. What you think the faa, steve, appreciate all your support and Hiroshi Sasaki i i wanted to tk you as well for both coming and participating but also for allowing soichi to fly on the dragon. I want to thank spacex employees who have worked tirelessly, hard and tirelessly through pretty extraordinary times. They continue to amaze me and i am so proud of them. So i i wanted to thank them for that as well. It not be more proud both of tho work weve all done together here today. Falcon 9s, the launch was beautiful. I dont have any specifics on any anomalies we had, which is great. We will get more data as we go. Dragon was droppedug off roughly 12 minutes into the nation into a beautiful orbit, and she is 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 we will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, 26 or so hours from that once we hand the crew over to nasa. Ughly sevn 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 with that we will take some questions. Our first question is from marcia. Hello . We can hear you. Great. For ms. Shotwell. Im curious how wired into the launch was elon . Was a backseat driving so to speak . He actually monitored all the action from. Wathank you. Elon was tied typing very cy to the launch. I have a series of texts to prove it, as usual. He is on the where planet, he is watching closely and providing guidance and support. Great. Our next question comes from michael from cnbc. My first question is for gwynne. Space actually broke a new ceiling her entrance of doing doing something that only countries had done before. How many of the companieser use entering the human spaceflight market in the next decade and following in yr footsteps now that you guys have don it . I may horrible predictor. I never get it right so i think what you can count on is what i say wont be right. Obviously we expect a flight from blowing up coming but i asking aboutoure the existing fighters. 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 ten there willf be plenty of folks doing this kind ofork to make it more accessible to more folks. Our next questiones comes frm eric berger. Congratulations everyone, such a big night for human spaceflight. I think this is question for cassie but if someone else wants to take it thats fine. Going back to yesterdays 24 hour delay, its medicine the primary driver of that was the fact that drone ship couldnt get out of workpi due to Tropical Storm aided. A few years ago, kathy, couldyo you imagine scrubbing or holding a lunch for a day to recover the first stage of a rocket . No, but we are also i think a few years ago were not looki at the cadence that we had in trying to be as Cost Effective on our Services Going forward, right . Also, this is a tremendous year for storms. I dont think if you asked me a few years ago if we wouldve had five storms hit louisiana coast and another coue hitting florida in november, i wouldve been surprised too. With the systems we have there constrais and big choices, and one of those choic was we had a beautiful opportunity on sunday, and so that was a big part of t conversation and thats deciding to pick this day. Yesterda ended up being not that great debated round the launch time. This was a great day and it was a great launch,nd itas an amazing experience. It was a really incredible experience. I think all of us are still excited about seeing it. Our next question comes from irene from aviation week. Thanks, bettina. Congratulations everyone. My question is for gwynne. The 15 months, seven dragons, are you counting commercial missions in that . Can you give us an update on where you stand on the commercial flight aside for my think the axial mission was now official on the boo of the end of next year. Is anything else . Anks. So i believe we did count when commercial mission in there, but i i dont want to do math in public. I will call you if i got that one wrong. We will be flying the crew to mission in about four and half months, and then crew three rohly possibly six months later. We do hope to fly cmercial mission with axiom, and maybe some other fun mission which i will chat about later. Our nextuestion comes from david currently. When shotwell, kind of curious about what happened to yo emotions when they had to be openan the hatch . Can you explain to t me this technology, i think we are all used to a hatch closing, you crank the real and it is closed. It seems to be a longer process. I dont understand everything you got going there, but can you talk about the hatchnd what happened Hiroshi Sasaki so im not sure i heard you. If youre asking about the do over on hatch operation we had today . We close the hatch the first time and the capsule did not pass its greek checks. We opened it and took a look at the seals, did come find a little bit of adjusted the seals and we closed the hatch and the dragon capsule has to its leak check. Okay. Make that operation a little smoother, but we got it done. Take you, gwynne. Our next question comes from faust. Question for either gwynne kathy. There were some alerts after crewys drag them into orbit abot the thermal control system. It looks like that was resolved but was that just a false alarm or that an actual issue with the thermal control system that has since been corrected . Thanks. Its amazing come in the first hour flight its got all th systems are activated, and so the fault detection system ar working, and what happened was it hit a theater and that ppenss during system startup and it did exactly what it is supposed to do. It flipped over to the second leg. We have a lot of retentions in the syste and the team was able to go in and ended up clring the fault in both ls are back up and running. This is not an unusual thing to happen, when systems are started like this. We go through the launc and then o we kind of hang out for e first hour of dragon activation becausehe amazing thing that goes through and checks at alle different parts of it and gives us a good health check forhe way the spacecraft is working. Unlike gwynne said, dragon is flying beautifully right now. Thank youh. Both. Our next question comes from joey roulette, reuters. Thanks, bettina. I wanted to follow up. Can you give u a sense of what ppen with the thermal control system . For gwynne come how many private Astronaut Missions you guys have booked up right now . And you get was a ballpark or thanks. Sometimes its just a senr issue, right . I started since are you getting everything offline. So actually nothing really happened to the system. It was kind of the function of running through and when you have all these ches in your system to all these checks come sometimes it will hit a limit and then flip over and then y reset the pieces of it. Actually we have two good loops now and the system is working great. Like iaid its just a little bit of a start glitch. Thank you. Ul, upi is our next reporter. Paul . Or thanks. I am really thinking about the astronauts in space now and four people trying to sleep after launching on a rocket and flying around the earth on a new spacecraft. My interest in is the flight time tenet apparently was extended partly for their sweet time. We heard how important it is to get proper sleep b im thinking that must be kind of a challenge. I guess, casio gwynne, could you talk about how well astronauts sleep in spacend is it a really peaceful ride the board dragon now . Is it cruising in orbit is there lights out rule or no talking rule . Thanks. They d do have little curtais that they cover the windows and they do get out of their suits and get comfortable and lay down. You haveu to realize you were n zero gee, right . Are in a little bit different position. These are experienced crew members and they know theyve got to get the rest and work through them. And so the other really great thing is you can watch them because there would be a lot of nasa coverage of the nation over this next 26 Hours Mission you can see the crew doing every activities. Not while theyre sleeping but doing other activities so you caney watch along with the do. These folks know what they are doing. They are very experienced. They know they have to get the rest so they can do the sequence of events that are coming up for docking and safely as possible. Still would be really hard t sleep rightha now. They were actually, this crew was, they were there and they were enjoying being in space again. White and expience. Our next question comes from ephen clark. Congratulations. Stephen clark from spaceflight never one to clarify one thing with the seven Dragon Missions the next 15 months i think h said. To those include the cargo miions or are those all cw missions . And also i wanted to get an update on crew dragon production line. How manyy crew drans are currently being built . Youny have two that it been launched now. Do you have any other crew dragons being assembled right now are will you be doing your near john missions with these two mcnichols . I was hedging a little bit. I did check my foot and the seven nations i was talking about were all for nasa. Crs 2124 and three crew missions. But i was hedging just in case come just in case one of those doesnt go include a commercial mission between now and then. And then the other question you asked was is there a second part . How many dragons in production. Thanks. We have the demo2 dragon is in the refurbishment process to fly crew two. Theres a dragon capsule theres also the crs 21 capsule. I think tres two cargo capsules after that and we will have three additional crew dragon capsules, i believe. And most, they a all to some extent in production right now. Okay. So our next question comes from david of busins insider. Thank you for taking my question. Kathy, i understand it will be fully automated coming up but is or anything, any steps you are particularly concerned about or will be watching closely . Gwynne come to mention some anomaly data. Maybe i miss her too but is or anything spacex and necessary during lunch orit a sink and eal orbit that needs further instigating . Thanks. So d the dragon is designed o have an automated docking, and right w all theystems are working. And s we are not expecting to be any issues with the docking. And obviously they will be checking out the systems as they get near station, at the check all t Different Centers and make sure thing are functioning. And then the crew is also o trned on being able to do some kind of back maneuve, too. But right now we are not expecting any issues and im sure docking tomorrow will go smoothly. So wanted to get one more question for Hiroshi Sasaki. We know this mission had a lot of great milestones not oy the fit crew rotation from a commercial space vehic but also carrying the firststut International Astronauts on this mission. What is next for jaxa in the future . [inaudible]au astronaut Hiroshi Sasaki, on crew dragon two. I hope he will become iss commander. Fantastic, fantastic. Well, we were going to start wrapping up this press conference, but before we do that i would like to come over to administrator bridenstine for his closing remarks. Well sure. I think what we seem to do is really remarkable. So much work by so many people over a sustained period of tim again, thank you to spacex and gwynee stwell and elon musk for bei an amazing partner to nasa come for all of these years. I think itss also important to recognize kathy who is very involved in the commercial resupply program, which then kind of like to develop tt of a commercial program and, of course, kathy is that amazing wo for both of those programs giving us to where we are as an agency now with commercial crew and doing such an amazing job that we decideo put her in charge ofll human spaceflight for nasa come so she is not responsible for gettings to the moon and on to mar just want to say to khy, nas is so grateful for all of your leadership, for all of these years, and cant wait to see the Amazing Things that you and the team do in the future. I also want to thank our friends from japan. Again, the is no better partner to the United States of america when it comes to Space Exploration in the nation of japan. Could have,eventually missions to mars and japan has been an amazing partner, so, thank you. Of course, for this mission, so unique in that we are now going into basically Operational Missions that are commercial in nature where nasa is a customer. Our goal has been and will be to one customer of many customers in a very robust commercial marketplace in low earth orbit, but we also want to have numerous providers competing on cost and innovation and of course, safety. Weve seen amazing work from spacex already. Theres more coming from boeing. But i think this eco system, this very virtues cycle of continuous benefits to the american taxpayer and Space Exploration. As the missions go forward and we get more and more into the commercial aspect of it, the f. A. A. Is going to continue to be a critical partner and were grateful to the leadership there at the f. A. A. For licensing this launch and moving us forward as a nation into this new era of commercial human space flight, into orbital space. So, so many Amazing Things on this flight, as kathy said earlier, it is not over. This was a beautiful launch and we are all very excited about the launch, but remember, this is a this is a sixmonth mission and its the first of many. And i will tell you that, you know, we use the word operational. Make no mistake when youre flying into space, theres always risk, and we will always be diligent. And we have all the confidence in the world in spacex and in the nasa teamnd our partners, international partners, f. A. A. And of course, boeing upcoming which is going to be exciting. So im just very, very thrilled how tod went and look forward to so many great days in the future. Thank you, jim. Stay with us, weve got lots of exciting news as we mentioned. Well have live continuous coverage on Na Television through docking that will happen at 11 p. M. Tomorrow and of course, the welcome ceremony. All of this information and lots more at nasa. Gov and watch e live broadcast on nasa tv. Thank you for joining us and have a good night. The nasa spacex crew is due to arrive at the International Space station tonight. Our live coverage starts at approximately 11 p. M. Eastern when they dock with the iss. Thats followed byn onboard welcoming ceremony and a postdocking News Conference. Watch live on cspan, online at cspan. Org, or listen on the free cspan rio app