Days after returning to earth marking the successful end to the first SpaceX Crew Dragon mission, two NASA astronauts talked again about the historic milestone in spaceflight.
Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley answered questions on Tuesday during a virtual briefing from Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"We're trying to get our Earth legs back," Hurley said. "We are incredibly excited to be back, incredibly excited to share the mission with all of you."
Hurley said he hopes the successful Crew Dragon mission "brings brightness to 2020."
Behnken said the mission has been years in the making, including his and Hurley's five years preparing for the launch and landing.
"It's a humbling experience to be a part of what was accomplished with the SpaceX vehicle," Behnken said.
On Sunday, the two astronauts splashed down off the coast of Pensacola in SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which they nicknamed Endeavour. The splashdown marked the end of one historic mission but the beginning of what NASA and SpaceX call the next era in American spaceflight.
Behnken on Tuesday shared a vivid description of the intensity of re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
"As we descended...thrusters were firing almost continuously," he said. "I did record some audio of it; it doesn't sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere."
The Dragon capsule reached speeds of 17,500 mph during orbit and then 350 mph when it re-entered the earth's atmosphere. As the spacecraft descended, its outside temperatures reached 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, though SpaceX assured the world the astronauts felt temperature of about 85 degrees.
After spending months in zero gravity, the astronauts felt gravitational forces of four to five times the gravity felt on Earth.
The mission kicked off at the end of May when the two astronauts blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in the Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. It was the first crewed launch from U.S. soil since the last Space Shuttle mission nine years ago.
Behnken and Hurley then docked at the International Space Station and spent a little more than two months working alongside fellow astronaut and ISS Commander Chris Cassidy and two Russian cosmonauts. During their days onboard the space station, both astronauts completed 1,024 earth orbits and 114 hours of research.
The two astronauts, back inside Dragon Endeavour, undocked from the ISS on Aug. 1. The trip back to earth took 19 hours.
Sunday's splashdown was another historic milestone for the mission, as it was the first time in 45 years the world watched an ocean landing of a spacecraft. The last time was on July 21, 1975, when the crew of the Apollo-Soyuz mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii.
"Welcome back to planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX," Mission Control said to the astronauts immediately after splashdown.
Retrieving the capsule and astronauts were more than 40 SpaceX staff, including doctors and nurses, on a recovery ship.
The astronauts spend about 30 minutes bobbing in the ocean inside the Dragon capsule awaiting recovery crews. During a post-splashdown briefing, Behnken and Hurley said they passed the time by prank calling friends and family on a satellite phone.
"It's a lot to process, you know five hours ago we were in a spaceship bobbing our in the ocean making prank phone calls to whoever we could get a hold of," Hurley said Sunday. "Which was kind of fun by the way."
"We are super proud to be just a small part of the team...bringing those space flights back to the Florida coast and bringing that capability back to America," Behnken said.
What's next for NASA, SpaceX and Dragon? There's already another crewed mission planned for the end of September. Crew 1 consists of NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover along with JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
NASA and SpaceX also plan to launch at least six missions to the space station, not counting Behnken and Hurley's Demo-2 mission.
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