and touchdown. welcome back new shepard s first human crew. welcome to earth. congratulations to all of you. you ve watched all of it unfold live here. billionaire jeff bezos and his crew, check it out, popping open the hatch of the rocket and popping some champagne, too, first unpiloted suborbital flight all civilian crew landing successfully on the 52nd anniversary of the lunar landing. we re gearing up to hear from the crew members during a news conference and that includes 82-year-old wally funk, involved in the mercury program who became the oldest person to go into space. look at her popping out of the capsule there, about seven hours away from the launch site in south lake, texas. a wally watch party her family and friends cheering her on as she made this historic flight, tears, emotion, joy, all of it. we are here with you for the next couple of hours for a special coverage. i bring in nbc s morgan chesky and van horn in texas and all astronaut panel of experts wi
romans, we begin this morning with an extraordinary sight in cuba. thousands of ordinary cubans taking to the streets demanding more food, medicine and relief in the midst of a pandemic driven economic crash there. white house officials have expressed support. patrick oppmann has the latest from havana. thousands of protesters took to the streets here in havana and across cuba on sunday demanding change. this is something that almost never happens here that people engage in antigovernment protests. the government does not permit it, usually they re shut down very, very quickly, and many people are just too afraid to openly criticize the government. on sunday it was a very different picture as thousands of people did just that. they said they were sick of energy shortages and empty store shelves, many complained about the government s coronavirus response. the economy here has been deeply, deeply damaged. the economy was already ailing before the pandemic. now with more than
plane back here on the earth s surface any moment. joining us now to discuss from new mexico is cnn innovation and space correspondent rachel crane. rachel, the astronauts have just touched down after the historic virgin galactic flight. sum it up for us. reporter: that s right, jake. i m just a few hundreds yards away from unity right now. hopefully we ll see richard branson and hear his emotion and what this experience was like, after he took his historic space flight for him and his team. everyone has been pegging this as the billionaire space race. today richard branson they got to where they wanted to go. it was a sub orbital flight. richard branson passed the 50-mile mark and will receive his astronaut wings. that s a ceremony we ll see in a few moments, him and two additional mission specialists on board. they ll be receiving their astronaut wings today. blue origin, their direct competitor in the suborbital space, they re set to make their first cruewed flight o
i m going to officially now wish you all a good day from msnbc world headquarters here in new york. we re a bit high noon here in the east. welcome, everyone, to alex witt reports. it s a special one. you saw it live on msnbc, one small step for man and a giant leap for a billionaire taking on space as the next frontier. sir richard branson making history successfully launching himself into space on his space plane. five, three, two, one. release. release. amazing, right? it s incredible. it was historic. this launch this morning. the first fully crewed test flight to the edge of space. and that is a full burn. we are headed to space. and the passengers in the back have been cleared to unstrap. 279,000 feet and climbing. branson s trip to the edge slightly edged out jeff basos. it s an experience of a lifetime. now i look down and congratulations to everybody. and there we heard it. what he was thinking and as we re looking at video of that plane landing extraor
military assistance, despite requests from the haitian government. meanwhile, in florida the miami-dade courthouse is now closed due to safety concerns that were revealed during a building inspection that was prompted by the tragic surfside condo collapse. the engineering firm that examined the 28-story court building says that during the review it found structural distress in support beams and joists, including steel columns that are in, quote, poor condition, and concrete columns that have numerous cracks in them. the courthouse will begin to undergo repairs immediately. employees will return to working from home while that happens. from the miami-dade courthouse to the nation s highways and bridges, it is apparent that infrastructure in this country is in need of major repair and it does appear that congress is taking notice of these glaring warning signs and is poised to take action. senate majority leader chuck schumer says his chamber will work into its august recess