about six months. and this is exactly as kristin laid out what spacex has been trying to accomplish, right? sending more civilians into space. why is that a good thing? why is access to space a good thing? pam, that s a great question. i ve been thinking about this for the past few months as these things have been happening. and i think what we re seeing today is a great example of what non-astronauts, non-nasa astronauts and space flights can do. as a nasa astronaut, i was trained along with a lot of other engineers and scientists and military personnel to f fulfill the charta that nasa had. we trained for those things, to benefit the world of science, engineering, those types of things. but that s what our missions were. we have those private missions now, this jared, with his
really became a family. and so, yes, anytime you re going into space, it is incredibly risky. but spacex felt very confident that they had a safe vehicle. this is now the fourth crewed mission that spacex has launched into space. and of course, this comes after this nearly decades-long desert of u.s. astronauts being launched from u.s. soil after the retirement of the space shuttle fleet. so truly, we re witnessing this new era of space travel and really, you know, i ve been down to a lot of launches. this is the very first launch that i ve been to, first crewed launch where nasa really had no role in it whatsoever, because as you said, no nasa astronauts onboard, pam. so what does this mean for them? they can t really call themselves astronauts, though, even though they went through this mission, right? or can they? well, they are going to call themselves astronauts. spacex will call them
able and have the prerogative to share as much or as little about this mission as they want. so we can see in a few minutes now you can see the crew dragon capsule, called resilience, safely on the capsule recovery ship just off the coast of florida in the atlantic ocean. it appears that it is secure in its little bird s nest there. and in a few moments, we should see some of the crew members coming out, checking the capsule, making sure it s okay. and you know, one thing i would point out, look at that capsule. it was beautiful, pristine white when it took off. now look at it. you see those like black streaks and the charring of the capsule this. that is from reentry. that is from the extremely height temperatures that that capsule had to endure, that plasma wall that we were talking about, that caused the communications blackout. but those marks, they might seem ugly, they might seem dirty to you and me, but spacex is incredibly proud of them. they love to keep their falcon
a great shot looking at the chutes. a lot of communication going back between the crews and ground station, but it s to slow them down to 120 miles per hour. we re expecting the main chutes to cut off and the main chutes to come shortly after this. [ cheers and applause ] do you have a visual? copy that, spacex, good news. at 4:04 p.m. pacific time, we have confirmation that the main chutes have deployed.