A frontrow seat to democracy. Nasa officials held a News Conference following the successful launch of its rocket. Launched from a Kennedy Space and orbit the moon. Spacecraft is scheduled to return to earth on december 11. Good morning and thank you all for staying up with us at nasas Kennedy Space center. And this morning at 1 47 a. M. Nasa system rocket and orion lifted off. It is on its way and beginning its mission. It completed a number of Mission Milestones and the translunar injection burn to put it on its trajectory to the moon. We have bill nelson, mike, and the manager and mike john at marshall and orion and emily nelson. Are it has been an incredible day and open up to issue a few words. I was standing the roof of the l. C. C. With a number of astronauts. And im telling you we have never seen such a tail of flame. There were a bunch there that would like to be on that rocket. And i have to say for what we saw tonight, its an aplus. Its a test flight. Took a Long Time Coming to get here. Last time, we were on the moon, apollo 17, and we still have a long ways to go. And this is just the test flight. And we are stressing it and testing it in ways that we will not do to a rocket that has a human crew on it. And the legacy this crew put together to get us to this day over the years is a legacy that indeed has been well earned and will continue as we now explore the heavens as we go back to the moon and we go to mars. Good morning and thank you again for continuing to follow our program in the mission. We have talked to you a number of times about our Mission Priorities demonstrate the vehicle in the space flight environment as priority 2 and the smaze craft is priority 3 and science and out reach and technology demonstrations. We have a priority one mission. We have the rocket do its job and deliver the rocket do it. And i want to thank john and the program for putting that priority one mission in play as well as jody at the Marshall Space Flight center who did an amazing job as well as our friends and family here under janet and mike and the team and launch director. They did an amazing job in getting us to this point. We do have a priority one mission in play because of their work. Today we got to witness the worlds most powerful rocket take the earth by its edges and shake the wicked eye of it and it was quite a sight. We are going to learn a lot more as we go. We have four more weeks of mission to go. We are barely starting to scratch the surface of the artemis. We have learned a few things along the way. The system is performing the way we intended it to. We had some dropouts in the flight instrumentation, on the rocket. We had some funnies in the star trackers and some funnies in micro switches on the solar eight wings and we are pressing outbound toward the moon. We will continue to gather data as which described earlier and speaking for myself, there is definitely relief that we are underway. But we also have a heightened sense of awareness that this mission is underway and im not going to rest well until we have splashdown and recovery. And now well hear from mike, ground system. What an amazing day and launch and im envious because you were outside and we are sitting inside and looking through the glass panes and there was moisture on the glass panes and we didnt have the view that you all had. But it was well worth the visit. And mike talked about the four priority goals. I would add a fifth and improve our ground systems and ground team was ready to launch this Mission Today and we had a terrific day. It has been a journey for us as a Ground Operations Team and the team has shown a ton of resill yepsy and dealt with hurricanes and the team has shown the resolve to do something really special. A lot of us come to nasa and dream about it when you were a kid. And they make it a point, i want to work for nasa someday and part of that reason is to be a part of change in the world and today we did that. We helped jumpstart man exploration. We shall going to move further and further in the solar system and im proud of the team today. And we are going to go to john honeycutt. The few seconds that we did and look at the l. L. C. And this big ball of fire, you know its a little over 12 years since i got to experience this and soy awesome to be back in the business doing it. And we have laid the foundation for the Artemis Program. The team did an outstanding job. The rocket performed outstandingly. We had a good performance on the hardware all day today. And im looking at those Dynamic Events as we get down in the last seconds. And then we get booster ignition and watching the performance of the core stage and those Dynamic Events such as the pressurization system and auction layer units all performed outstandingly. The boosters and r25 engines and rcps, the requirements. And then we had the first burn gives us the raise. Was outstanding and then the t. O. I. Burn performed outstandingly. Right now, i cant say im more proud of the hard way performed and more proud of the team. Jackie. Now over to howard with the orion program. What a terrific day we have had had. I thank john and mike, just Terrific Team getting us off the ground and heading to the moon. I cant thank them enough for their teams effort and start the journey of learning about our spacecraft and flishing these missions that mike talked about just a little bit over 26 days and along the way, we have the most powerful rocket we have built taking us to the moon and as we go forward the European Service module that will provide the power and propulsion to get into lunar orbit and return safely home. The european are in partnership with nasa and great opportunity for us as we explore and learn more about the spacecraft and Going Forward with artemis. I am one of those men who has a little boy and dreamed about going beyond lower orbit and just thinking about watching the rocket go up and orion han a dream of mine and today is the start of a great journey for the agency and for artemis. Emily and justin. We got to see a truly exciting launch which is the binge of an exciting mission. The team did a flawless job getting to tanking and the houston team had a seamless handover and executed the remainder of that up to orbit and great to see those teams get the opportunity to use the expertise they have used in training and preparation. This mission is not only going to test the spacecraft but test the teams as well. And as we have mentioned, we have had some opportunities to work through some of those tests and i am fairly confident that as we progress further to the moon, we will run into a few more. The exciting thing about this flight is see how this ship behaves in space and react to the deep space. The team is characterizing performance of the solar a structure so we have a good understanding of how the spacecraft reacts when we do burns and we will do our outofbound trajectory by using the orion and characterize that performance as well and exciting ride and im not sure we will get a lot of sleep in the next 26 days. Looking forward to what we are going to learn here. We want to show you some of the first images of earth from orion as it heads to the moon. Rrl all right. Knew to the fun part. Marsha with the ap. Associated press for mr. Nelson. Apollo is a tough act to follow and looking back on what has gone before with the moon, what were your emotions at liftoff and how do you see what happens going down in space history . One of the emotions i had was that i wish members of the crew that i had participated in were here. A group of professionals, the best of the best and culmination of a lot of a lifetime of sacrifice that they have done. I think back to the real sacrifices, the astronauts that we have lost, not only in flight in apollo one but in the training accidents, all of those emotions welled up in my today. And you should have heard the other astronauts that i was standing with. We were down in the Launch Control center and all went up on the roof so that we could feel that acoustic shock wave and see undiminished that tail of a flame of fire. And then to see that pillar of smoke, even in the dark of light night, it was pretty overwhelming. Thank you. Reuters, up front. Thanks. Question for john. This rocket has been a decade in the making and billions of cost overruns and engineering challenges to get us to this point. How does it feel to see this thing come alive and launch, what does it feel like . And then for mike, can you go into the funnies you saw during the mission and whether there is any debris that was created that you might have be expecting as a risk . It feels great to get the rocket and feels even better to have it perform the way it did. Its been a Long Time Coming, if you look back on it, these things dont happen over night and follow similar timelines. The emotion that i have that hits me the most is really, its the people that do the work that make the hardware what it is. Of course, the hardware does the job at the end of the day, but its the people that gets us to the launch pad and help us build this foundation and they all take a lot of pride in it or two. In terms of the funnies that we saw, in terms of the imagery findings, we are still working through that. There were a couple of indications that we had some debris liberation fairly early in assent and the team is looking at that in terms of what it was, again, its too early to say. The funnies that we saw on the star trackers, there was a complement ready flag that was set and the team had to resolve and activate the star trackers in spite of that. And solar wings when they were deployed, i think it was solar wing number three, we saw a pair of micro switches that it wasnt fully latched and came in and did indicate that they latched that maybe it was a thermal condition especially when you take a vehicle and take it from you know conditions, ambient conditions on earth that we purge and put it in the deep space environment and sometimes you get thermal gradient and they came in and we knew that was something that could happen fairly early on and developmental instrumentation on the rocket that dropped out during the assent. At this stage of the game, it was benign and we pushed on in spite of those. Right now we are not concerned with those. Howard, i dont know if you have any additional thoughts. We are excited to look at the data and keep analyzing data and see what that tells us. Understand that things will go wrong. This is a new system and its a test flight. So we are going to expect those things to go wrong and then we are going to try to work them. This is part. Space is hard. Space is real hard when you try to do what were doing. Tom with nbc. Thank you. Congratulations to all of you. Mr. Nelson, it has been 50 years next month since we saw humans on the moon and now the first step of returning to the moon. So im wondering, you talked about the emotions and thought about those lost in the Space Program over the years, but to think that now five decades later, the first steps in going back, i wonder if you could address that. And also, you talked about needing to stress it and test it to a greater extreme so you know what the astronauts will be in for. What does that mean to stress it and test it to this extent now . How will you be doing that . What does it mean . It has a lot more sensors than on the rockets in the future and thats to know how the vehicles perform. ,. , by. We went to the moon, they were there for a short period of time and we came back. Then sky lamp and we learned thousand live long for the zero g. Then we had the the Space Shuttle and built the space station. Now were going back to the moon, not just for the sake of going to the moon but to learn, to live, to develop, to learn how to live on the moon in order to prepare to send humans all the way to mars. The moon is just a few days away. Mars is months and months away. And we are understanding now from the James Webb Space Telescope just how big and vast this universe is. Theres a lot out there to explore. And this is the next beginning. And this is the artemis generation. This is so inspiring. Thanks for letting us be here. I wonder if youve spoken to President Biden at all . Whats his reaction . Do you see this increasing support for nasa and International Partners . Have you heard from any of them who work with artemis and the gateway project . Thank you. As you know, the president is in because lee in bali, indonesia. I would not be surprised that since it was daytime over there, whereas its nighttime here, if whatever meeting he was in, if he his assistants did not take a tv to him and show him the launch. And that would make him very, very proud. And i look forward to speaking to him sometime after he gets back and gets other his yet lag. His jet lag. What was your second question . Do you think this is going to increase support in congress and have you heard from International Partners . First of all, i think its noteworthy that in a nation in which our politics is so split, when you have both rs and ds come together to support, our Space Program is such a place of reconciliation and camaraderie and bipartisanship. And so i think the success of this rocket and the future potential success of the mission is only going to energize the support that we have in congress. My goodness. Look at the diet of successes that theyve been fed. Perseverance. Ingenuity. All on mars. Dart. Hitting a bulls eye seven million miles away. Look at all the science thats come out. And now the James Webb Space Telescope giving us these unbelievable pictures of light thats been traveling for 13. 5 billion years. And now going back to the moon in order to go to mars. That, i think, is going to engender a great deal of support of capitol hill. Next question. In the second row. Hi. Administrator nelson, do you feel its essential to get the bill passed, now youve got then rocket off the ground, im curious how your perspective has changed from writing the bill to implementing it, if you think mowd youd do things differently now that youve been though implementing side. Thank you. One of the first things i said when we got back to the buildings here was, i sent a text to senator Kay Bailey Hutchison who was my partner in crafting the legislation back 12 years ago. As soon as i can get their address, i will also be texting rob neighbor, who was an assistant in the white house to president obama, and to jack lieu, who was the director of the o. M. B. At the time. He became later the chief of staff to president obama and then ended up as secretary of the treasury. To congratulate them as i did kay as well. Thats just a speck, i mean, the congratulations goes to everybody. This team. This professional. I. That performance. Today. Tonight. That you saw. And so my perspective has changed because i get to see it from this point of view, however, remember back in those early legislative years, i got to see it from an inside view when i participated in the 24th flight of the Space Shuttle. And so this is really a gratifying time but its only going to get better. In two years, were going to be sending humans to the moon. In three years, were going to be landing on the moon. And then its going to be a series of thing including someone mentioned earlier, a gateway. A lunarout post. A mini space station. So artemis 4 is actually going to go up, install gateway in this lieu mar elliptical polar orbit and then they were basically when we had a an ignition event on the ro10 engine, we saw that in the period but then also at the ignition and startup of the transmission. Its normal we knew that would happen. Last reason we position those solar rays in a specific position because we do impart a load on the on these solar array wings. I dont remember how long they were. But theres a reason we put them in those positions. I dont know if you have anything to add, howard . I think that was very good, mike. Jeff with space news in the back. Question for mike, i think we were all holding our breath when we heard about the hydroyen leak. Fortunately it was fixed. I wonder if you can talk us through exactly what the problem was and what the red crew team did when tai went out to the pad to fix the problem . Definitely be glad to. As i chance to listen to some of the questions and look out in the crowd, i love there are so many artemis shirts, artemis hats. I love that weve got a media team as excited about what were doing as yall are. Thank you for that. What we had was, we had a leak in a replenish valve which is down in a cryo valve complex weve bot in the weve got in the base of the mobile launcher. So, you know that caused us to go into stop flow on the upper stage while we resolved the leak we were seeing in the base. We sent a read tell out and basically what the red team was doing, we had a couple of folks in there, its kind of a tight i dont know if you can see the video, not sure what youre seeing. Its a tight fit out there with the torque wrench, they were packing down two packing nets, they were tightening down either side of them theyve tightened them. We they cycled the valve. We went back in, put a wremple on, they were turning a little bit. Cycled the valve again, tightened them more, then they really were solid. So we felt good that the packing nets and nuts were tight. We got the red team back away from the pad. And got back into topping reand repleppish. As we did that in fact we resolved the problem and no longer had that leak in the base. Really great work by that red team. Its always a hard thing to do to send a red team out to the launch pad you only do it when you feel like you have to. But in this case i think the team felt that really our most likely case here was that we just had some loose nuts on the valve so we sent the team out, they did a terrific job and they got the issue resolved. Definitely a high moment, a low moment when we saw the leak. We all struggled through some of the Hydrogen Leaks we had in the past. A high moment when we recognized we solved the problem. Just want to remind folks on the phone if you have a question were happy to take those over the lines as well. Press starone