And our japanese partners. And the spacex team led by elon musk. The energy in the room is it is a tremendous accomplishment for our country and for humankind as we begin the next significant step towards the commerce ally station, in this case, of lowearth orbit. This launch is another major milestone in space transportation. Is the culmination of a lot of hard work from a lot of people in government and industry all working closely together. It is also the first faa licensed orbital human spaceflight launch. Our job in this nation is to protect public safety, property, and national security, and we have done that. We will continue to work with the space industry and nasa to ensure we continue to meet these priorities and we will continue our efforts to help make the airspace system more flexible and dynamic so we can export support the increase in Space Operations in the coming years. As a matter of fact, i received a text from our command center just outside of washington, d. C. That we release the airspace for commercial traffic within 20 minutes of launch and we continue to refine our capabilities so it is a pleasure to be with you tonight and congratulations to everyone on a successful start to a great mission. Thanks. Today. Rilled to be here i want to make sure i get all the thank yous. Thanks to nasa, to start with, for the partnership that we have had. This journey began in august of 2006 when we first started working on it together, so thank you for your partnership. We have been working together for quite some time, from the beginning. I want to thank another Mission Partner here. I want to thank the faa. Appreciate all your super art. I wanted to thank you as well for both coming and participating but also for on a dragon. To fly i want to thank spacex employees who have worked tirelessly, hard and tirelessly, through pretty extraordinary times. Iey continue to amaze me and am so proud of them so i wanted to thank them for that as well. Of theot be more proud work that we have all done together here today. Falcon nine, 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 dropped off 12 anutes into the mission, into beautiful orbit and she is operating just fine. All systems nominal. Executed burn. I think theres two more to go. Stationached the space in a little over 24 hours from now. Breathe we will able to a sigh of relief 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, it is really the beginning of a new era in human spaceflight, so thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you all. I know i can speak for millions who are excited to see these and it gets to the International Space station. We will take some questions. Our first question is from marshall done marsha. Hello. We can hear you. Im curious how wired into the launch was elon musk . Was he backseat driving, so to speak . Im curious as to where he monitored all the action from. Thank you. He was tied into the launch very closely. As usual, regardless of where he watching planet, he is closely and providing guidance and report. Great. Our next question comes from michael from cnbc. My first question is for gwen. Spacex has broken a new ceiling in terms of doing something that only countries have done the or. How many other companies cc opening the market and following in your footsteps now that you guys have done it . I am a horrible predictor. I never get it right. What you can count on is what i will say copyright. We expect we have to have flights from boeing upcoming but i dont think you are asked about the existing providers. I think you are talking about new ones. This is a tough business to break into. I would not 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. Fromr next question comes ars technica. Congratulations, everyone. Such a big night for human spaceflight. I think this is a question for kathy but if someone else wants to take it, thats fine, too. Going back to yesterdays 24 hour delay, its my understanding that the primary driver of that was the fact that the drone ship could not get out of court. I was wondering, a few years ago, could you imagine holding a launch for a day, you know, to recover the first stage of a rocket . No, but you know, we are also a few years ago, we were not looking at the cadence that we had and trying to be as costeffective on hours this is going forward. This has been a horrendous year for storm. I dont think if you would have asked me a few years ago if we would have had five storms hit the louisiana coast, another set hit florida in november, i would have been surprised, too. You know, with the systems that we have, theres constraints and big choices in one of those choices was we had a beautiful opportunity on sunday so that was a big part of the conversation. Yesterday ended up not being that great of a day around lunchtime so this was a great day and it was a great launch and it was an amazing experience. It was a really incredible experience and all of us are still excited about being it. Our next question comes from irene foren from aviation week. Quite my question is for gwen. Are you counting commercial missions in that and can you give us an update on where you stand on the commercial flights aside from my think the Axiom Mission which is officially on the books for the end of next year . Is there anything else . Thanks. I believe we did count one commercial mission but i dont want to do math in public. I will call you if i got that one wrong. Flying the crew mission in about 4. 5 months and then its possibly six months later. We hope to fly a commercial mission with axiom and you know, maybe some other fun mission, which i will chat about later. Question comes from david. Kind of curious about what happened to your emotions when they had to reopen the hatch, and can you explain to me that technology . It seems to be a little bit longer process. I dont understand anything going there. Im not sure i heard you. If you are asking about the doover on the operation we had today, we closed it first time. Not pass its weak checks. We took a look at it. Found a little bit of that, cleaned it out, adjusted the deals and reclose the hatch. And the dragon capsule past check. Ok. We got it done. Thank you. Our next question comes from jeff. Question for gwen or kathy. After theysome alert made it to orbit. Looks like that was resolved, but was not an actual issue with the control system that has not been corrected . All theis amazing is systems are activated in the thet hour of flight so detection systems are working what happened was it hit it flipped over to the second leg. We have a lot of redundant we in the system and then the team was able to go in and ended up clearing it and both legs are back up and running. This is not an unusual thing to happen when systems are added up like this. We all go through the launch and then we kind of hang out that first hour of activation because it was an amazing thing to check out all the different parts of it and it gives us a good health check for the way the race craft is working. Spacecraft is working. The dragon is flying beautifully right now. Our next question comes from joey at reuters. Just wanted to follow up on that. Can you kind of give us a sense of what happened with the thermal control system, and how many private Astronaut Mission do you guys have booked up right now . Can you tell us how much you are in talks for . Thanks. Sometimes, its just a sense issue. The start up sensor getting everything online so actually, nothing really happened to the system. It was just a function of running through and when you have all these checks in your system is doing all the checks, sometimes, it will hit a limit and over and then you reset the sins of it so actually, we had two good loops in the system is working great. Like i said, it is a little bit of a starting glitch. Thank you. Paul . Thanks. Im really thinking about the astronauts in space now and poor people trying to sleep after launching on a rocket and around the earth on a new craft. My understanding is the flight time was extended partly for their sleep time. We have heard how orton it is that they get proper sleep but i was thinking that must kind of a challenge so i guess you talk a little bit about how well astronauts in space and is it a really peaceful ride for dragon as it is cruising in orbit or is there a lights out or no talking rule . Thanks. They cover the windows. Suitsey get out of their and they get comfortable and lay down. You have to realize you are in zero g so you are in a little bit different position. These are experienced crewmembers and they know that they have got to get there rest, though those are really great things. You can watch them because there will be a lot of coverage of the mission over this next fixed hours, though you will be able to see the crew during different activities, not while they are sleeping, but doing other activities, so you will be able to watch along what they do. These folks know what they are doing. They are very. They know they have to get there rest so they can be the sequence of events that are coming up for docking as safely as possible. Really hardstill be to sleep. I would be really excited. They were actually this crew was they were there and they were enjoying being in base again. What an. Our next question comes from stephen clark. Congratulations, stephen clark. Just wanted to clarify one thing on the seven Dragon Missions in the next team on. Those include the Cargo Missions or are those all crew mission . Updatewanted to get an on your production line, how many crew dragon are currently being built . Two being launched now, any being assembled now, or would you be doing your nearterm issues with missions with these vehicles . The seven missions were all for nasa. Three crew missions. Case oneging just in of those and does not go to include a commercial mission between now and then. And then the other question you asked was, second part. How many dragons are in production. Demo two dragon in the refurbishment process to flight crew. Ande is the dragon capsule the crs 21 cap though. I think theres two more cargo capsules after that and we will have three additional crew dragon capsules, i believe. In they are also some extent duction right now. Ok. So our next question comes from david of business insider. Thank you for taking my question. I understand this will be fully automated, but is there any staff you are particularly concerned about or will be watching closely . He mentioned some anomaly data. Is there anything basics and nasa saw during launch or in orbit that needs further investigation . The docking. Obviously, you know, they will be checking out the system as they get near a station and check all the different sensor suites and make sure things are functioning, and then the crew is also trained on being able to do some kind of maneuvers. Right now, we are not acting any issues. Im sure tomorrow, it will go smoothly. Question. E we know that this missions had a lot of great milestones, not only for the first crew rotation from a commercial space vehicle, but carrying the First International astronaut on this mission. What is next for nasa in the future . Send on dragon 2. I think he will become the iss commander. Fantastic. We are going to start wrapping up this press conference, but before we do that, i would like to turn it over to the administrator for some closing remarks. Sure. I think what we have seen today is really remarkable. So much work so many people over a sustained rabble of time area thank you to spacex. And elon musk for being an amazing partner to nasa, for all these years. I think its also important to recognize leaders who were involved in the commercial recent program. It kind of led to the development of a commercial crew program, and of course, she has done amazing work through both of those programs, getting us to where we are as an agency with commercial crew and doing such an amazing job that we decided to put her in charge of all human spaceflights for nasa so she is now responsible for getting us to the moon and onto mars. Her, nasa issay to so grateful for all of your leadership, for all of the, and i cannot wait to see the Amazing Things that you and the team do in the chair. I also want to thank our do in the future. I also want to thank our friends from japan. There is no better partner to the United States of america when it comes to space expiration than the nation of japan. They have been with us for a very long time. They will be with us. You will be with us for a long time into the future, when we program. Ut the artemis thank you for your commitment to the artemis program, for a sustainable return to the moon. And of course, eventually, missions to mars. Japan has been an amazing partner, so thank you. 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 be one customer of many customers in a very robust commercial marketplace in low earth but we also want to have numerous providers that are competing on cost and innovation and of course, safety. We have seen amazing work from spacex already. There is more coming from boeing. Ecosystem, this very Virtuous Cycle of Continuous Development is going to pay benefits to the american taxpayer and space exploration. And as these missions go forward and we get more and more into the commercial aspects of it, the faa is going to 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 human spaceflight into orbital space, so so many Amazing Things on this flight. It is not over. This was a full launch and we are all very excited about the launch, but remember, this is a sixmonth mission. And it is the first of many. Know, tell you that, you make no mistake, when you are flying into space, there is always risk and we will always be diligent. We have all the confidence in the world in spacex, the nasa team, our International Partners , and of course, boeing upcoming, which is going to be exciting, so i am very thrilled about how today went and i look forward to so many great days in the future. Stay with us. We have lots of exciting news. We will be having continuous coverage on Nasa Television through docking which will happen at 11 00 p. M. Tomorrow and we will also of course have the welcome ceremony. Nasa. Gov, and you can watch the live broadcast on nasa tv, so thank you so much for joining us, and have a good night. The nasa spacex crew is due to arrive at the International Space station on monday. Our live coverage starts at approximately 11 00 p. M. Eastern, when they dock with the iss. Thats followed by an onboard welcoming ceremony and a post docking news conference. Watch live on cspan. , or listenspan. Org on the free cspan radio app. Earlier today, nasa launched for astronauts aboard the Spacex Dragon capsule to the International Space station. Here is the launch. At 37 seconds the International Space station flying over Kennedy Space center. [speaking at the same time] crew one for all. Crew dragon poised to go catch it. 20 seconds until lift off. Tminus 15 seconds. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three,