NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 Postlaunch News Conference - 4K

Members of the media attend a postlaunch news conference hosted at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, following the launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station. Participants include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman; Daniel Neuenschwander, director, Human and Robotic Exploration, ESA (European Space Agency); Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA; Dana Weigel, manager, International Space Station Program, NASA; and Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science and Dragon Programs, SpaceX. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev launched aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket at 5:15 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the 12th crew rotation mission with SpaceX to the space station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

What is said in the film

Roger. Go. We think about the challenges, come up with the technologies and push the bounds of the science for the more ways that we can send humans into space, the better it is for our country and for the planet. Ready to get to work. What an amazing view from the International Space Station.

Wow. Look, I don't know. Spaceflight is a beautiful symbol of humanity. Miracles. How does one reach for these lofty goals?

Work hard and look what you can accomplish. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today at the crew 12 post-launch news conference. I am glad to be joined here today by NASA's administrator, Jared Isaacman. Professor Daniel New Englander, director of human and Robotic exploration from ESA. Steve Stich, the manager of CCP.

Dana Weigel, the manager of the I. s. s. program. And Juliana Shannon, director of NASA's Science and Dragon programs at Space-X.

Each of our participants will give brief remarks, and then we will open up the floor to those of you who are in the room and those of you calling in via telephone. If you want to get into the cube, please press Star one and out of the Q star two. So with that, I will hand it over to Administrator Isaacman. Bethany, good morning everyone. When a absolutely wonderful start to the day, we saw a remarkable crew 12 launch a very impressive, F9 return to launch site.

I'm sure everybody heard that. All while, Artemis two sits on the pad in preparation for its, it's historic mission. So, following this morning's launch operations, Dragon Dragon completed its, on orbit checkouts. Nose cone is open, and the crew are now safely on their way to the International Space Station. Teams throughout the agency space X is, Roscosmos and more continue to monitor the progress of the mission ahead of its docking.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, that this mission has shown in many ways what it means to be mission focused at NASA's. Just to recap, in the last couple of weeks, we brought, crew 11 home early. We pulled forward crew 12 to the launch date today, all while simultaneously making preparations, for the Artemis two mission. Which, it's next window will open up in early March. That's only possible.

Because of, an incredibly talented workforce that we have here at NASA, alongside our contractors and our, commercial and international partners. So, along this mission, NASA is sending an astronaut into space again for, into space for the first time. So I want to congratulate Jack Hathaway. This is what he's trained for. And I know he possesses the qualities found in many accomplished astronauts.

This crew will continue critical scientific research, in the orbiting laboratory. But their will make they will be making history in many other ways for example, I think this is very exciting. We will have the first spaceship to space station call, between the International Space Station and a lunar mission with, with Artemis. To really think about that. Right.

It's pretty exciting. I can only imagine what it's going to be like in the years ahead. Right. Have multiple space stations that are up there, cruise going, cruise cargo going to and from the lunar environment. People phoning home from a moon base.

That's pretty exciting to think about. And we're taking a nice step in that direction in the mission ahead. In addition, this mission, maintains over, our over 25 years of continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit. So the, the crew, along with the subsequent ones to follow, will absolutely make the most of our, our international space station. We are going to get our highest potential science and research up there with the aim, of cracking the code and igniting an orbital economy.

So someday we do live in a world with lots of commercially operated space stations in line with, our president's national space policy. And with that, I will turn it over to Steve Stich. Thank you, administrator Isaac. Ben. And thank you all for being here.

On a really happy morning. I'm proud to say we didn't talk about weather much at all. After talking about weather for a whole week, we have we're blessed with really good launch site weather this morning and really good weather down the ascent track, which we've been monitoring all week, and we finally found the right day to launch on Friday the 13th. I understand it's the first time NASA has ever launched on Friday the 13th, so, pretty amazing times. Really appreciate all the hard work between NASA and SpaceX and on, crew 12.

It's great to get the launch behind us. Of course, that's the first step. The crew's doing well on orbit. Jessica, Jack, Sophie and Andre are settling into their kind of off duty period. They did, a phasing burn a little while ago to set up the rendezvous will be docking, on Saturday, about 315 eastern.

There will be another burn, late tonight, around just before midnight. Another phasing burn. You know, we really didn't have too many things to work during the countdown. It was really quiet with Falcon nine, and and Dragon. Nothing really, off nominal as as Jared said, the spacecraft got on orbit.

We checked out the service section Dracos. The four bulkhead dracos are firing just fine. All the systems on Dragon are working well, and so we'll just continue to monitor the progress of the vehicle until we get in. Looking forward to docking. Hopefully our team will get a little rest today.

It's been a busy, long week. With the launch, I really want to thank, all of our partners, U. S. Space Force, detachment three, U. S.

Coast Guard, Department of War, the FAA, all the agencies that support us. We want to thank the space station program space and all our international partners. And I'll turn it over to Dana. All right. Thank you very much, Steve.

And thank you all for being here. I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to the Commercial Crew program and the SpaceX team for the tremendous amount of work that they did leading up to today's successful launch. And I'd also like to thank the space station team for being flexible and adapting all of the onboard plans. In light of the early return of crew 11. With today's launch, we've got docking tomorrow, as Steve said, 3:15 p.

m. Eastern Time. That docking will be to our node to zenith port. Really looking forward to having the crew on board and having the extra helping hands. This will be the second flight for Jessica and Andre, and the first flight for Jack and for Sophie.

So really excited to have them on board. Chris is doing great on board along with the two cosmonauts. He's been doing research, cargo packing and a little bit of tidying up. Getting ready for crew 12 arrival. When crew 12 gets there, they'll spend a few dedicated days with Chris going through handover.

Top of the agenda going through the emergency response procedures, becoming familiar with the location of the emergency equipment and then outfitting the Dragon with some of the standard emergency hardware. They'll also do familiarization work with some of the equipment that they would commonly interface with toilets, exercise equipment, those types of things they've got some critical research they'll be transferring for us in the first couple of days from freezers that we sent up with the Dragon, and then they've got a little bit of initial human research work that they'll be doing. And that's critical overall, just for our long term plans to fly longer and longer duration missions and making sure that we're taking care of astronauts health as we look forward to moon and Mars, longer durations. One unique thing we're doing for this handover. You know, normally we've got, four crew handing over with four crew.

And since we've got Chris, doing a little zone defense with the entire crew, we, supplemented and had some on board videos put together. So some of those were from previous crews. And then Chris made some. So when crew 12 gets up there, they're also doing some video review. As you heard in the pre-launch briefing.

We've got a busy few months in front of us on board space station. At the end of this month, we'll be undocking the space 633 cargo mission. Beginning of March, we will unbirthday HTV, X-1. We've got a very brief docking sensor demonstration. We'll do with the vehicle.

Then we'll release it in mid March for planning to do an Eva to finish installing a modification kit to one of our solar arrays. This is called the two way array. And that's in preparation for upgraded Erosa roll out arrays that are coming up later in the summer. We've got a second Eva in April to install the other modification kit on our very last array, the three B array. Towards the end of March, our Roscosmos colleagues are going to launch a progress cargo resupply vehicle.

And then in April, we've got the Northrop Grumman 24 Cygnus mission. So a lot going on, as always, very, very busy on board space station. And we're really looking forward to having the crew on board with that. I will pass it over to Daniel. Okay.

Thanks, Dana. Let me start by congratulating everybody for this amazing launch. Everything went really flawlessly. So thanks to the teams at ESA, NASA, space X, and all the partners for the incredible work done. My first thought, of course, is going to the crew and Sophie in particular.

This is just the start of a journey. I know that they are very well prepared and I'm really excited to see the next steps unfold. Sophie will be the first of her astronaut class to embark on a long duration mission, and she had an incredible journey. I can't stress enough how well she has been performing in a very short duration of time. Something unanimously underlined by her trainers is her mindset, which is well reflected in the patch of the mission on top of crew 12 on expedition 74 patches.

We also have an Isa patch because we never get enough of those. Of course, the name of the her mission is something she chose, something. She filled a line called Epsilon and to flex the power of small yet impactful contributions and how multiple parts unite to create a whole a nice message of modesty underlines that an astronaut is only in bracket, a part of a wider group, one piece of a complex puzzle. We are really all very proud of her and how she represents ESA, Europe and France. I also take the opportunity today to reaffirm ESA's commitment to the International Space Station and the peaceful exploration of space.

We are here this morning after the launch of two Americans, a Russian and a European as one crew. This is again a testimony of what we can achieve together. The ISS stands as a powerful symbol of humanity. Our meeting this week between NASA Administrator Derek Isaacman and ESA Director General Joseph Harshbarger gave us the opportunity to reaffirm our shared commitment of continuing this remarkable journey together. We are already preparing the next chapter, guided by common objectives, increasing the pace of human spaceflight and creating new opportunities for research and scientific discovery.

But low Earth orbit is not our final destination. We also this night also less on the pad, and I'm confident that through the Artemis program, to which either provides key contributions, we are returning to the moon because we want to stay there and down the road, Mars will follow. Finally, today, from every corner of Europe, we fly with Sophie and with that over to Juliana from space. Thank you. It's an honor to be here today to celebrate the launch of the crew 12 mission.

As you've heard, Falcon nine successfully lifted off and safely delivered the Dragon spacecraft and its crew to the intended orbit. And as you also heard, the Dragon spacecraft will be approaching the ISS tomorrow at 3:15 p. m. eastern. And after the successful docking of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, the space team's next big milestone, as you heard Dana mentioned, is the CRS 33 Dragon, return, which we're targeting at the end of this month.

So it's also a busy time for SpaceX, too. I have a few fun statistics. The this launch, the crew 12 mission is the 20th human spaceflight mission that SpaceX has launched. Also, when the Dragon capsule docks with the International Space Station, it will be the 51st time a Dragon spacecraft has docked with ISS or has visited ES. I should say, also, the Dragon spacecraft freedom.

This is its fifth flight. It previously launched crew for X2, x3, and most recently crew nine and now crew 12. Also as, you heard the administrator mention, this is also a first for space X, where the booster returned to its launch site, its actual launch site, LC 40, which is I always like to think that the booster feels like it's returning home when it returns exactly to the launch site. So that's a fun one. And that's something we'll be doing going forward.

LC 40 is where our landing zone is. And yeah, I'm on behalf of everybody at SpaceX. We are incredibly proud to support human spaceflight missions and all of the amazing science and research that happens on the International Space Station. So on behalf of everyone at SpaceX, we want to give a big thank you to our partners for their trust in us. And, thank you for flying SpaceX X and back to you, Bethany.

Great. With that, we will open the floor to questions. I say we have so many people here in the room. And I also just want to remind to the people who are dialing in that you can dial Star one to get into the queue and start to, to get out of the queue. We have a microphone here in the room.

So if we want to go right over here. Hi, Josh Jenner, Space. com. Thanks for doing this. With the were there any lessons learned from crew 11 that have informed maybe future pre-launch readiness procedures?

You know, crew 12 got to launch a little bit early. Is there anything in the future should you need to bring another crew home early that, the next crew on deck will be ready to take over in a in a different or a quicker way? Yeah. I mean, the vehicle we were able to, we were processing Dragon a little bit ahead of schedule, the whole time. And so we looked at the readiness of Dragon, and we were able to accelerate it a little bit.

We probably could have moved the launch up a little bit more with Dragon and Falcon nine at the end. When you look at the totality of a mission, it's it's getting the vehicles, the hardware and the software ready and also the crew. And so in this case, crew training was what drove the date that we selected. So we're looking at all those things. We are working already ahead for crew 13 and trying to have Dragon ready, a little bit early.

Again. We have that luxury right now with our manifest and I'll see if they and has anything to add. Yeah, I would just add that, you know, we we've got seven people total onboard space station. And the way we're flying today, we have, cosmonaut who flies with us. Of course, Andre launched with us today and then we've always got a Uso's crew member, a NASA crew member who's on the Soyuz.

And so, though it's more challenging with only one set of hands. We do have other folks on board who can help us if we really need extra sets of hands. So the way I look at it, though, it's not ideal if you have to bring a crew home early. There's no immediate crisis or emergency we can manage that. We formed before with three crew on board, so we're fortunate that we have flexibility in our training, our operations and the spacecraft, to make some adjustments.

But I don't see us doing anything specifically different in the future, per se, to like, let's say you have a vehicle on standby or a crew ready. We're we're pretty flexible and adaptable. And we'll work towards whatever the situation demands. And with that, we'll head over here. Thank you so much for this press conference.

Link white from Ria Novosti, if I may please, to, Mr. Jarrett, as the new administrator, how is your cooperation with Roscosmos going and what are the plans for the future? And if I may also, how important is it to incorporate AI into long distance missions? Thank you. Sure.

Well, I guess to, start on the AI point, we work backwards from there. It's incredibly important right now. Recently, we did a demonstration with our perseverance rover on Mars, where it was undertaking, AI operations like autonomous driving and detection, which, is going to be just essential for both robotic and crewed missions in the future. I mean, one, just natural transmission delays, you know, it's going to challenge, I think, the historic mission control construct there. But our sensors, especially on these robotic missions, you can gather so much data now, that you're going to want to be able to analyze it, interpret it, and make decisions while your, while you're on mission versus waiting for it to necessarily come back, and also determining what data is necessarily important to send back first, which can be discarded.

So I think that you're going to continue to see that, in fact, one of the, missions to, robotic mission to Venus that we're looking at now may, be designed right from the get go to have, AI incorporated into its mission software in terms of a relationship. You know, with Roscosmos, I think that the crew 11 situation highlights it at its best, right? I mean, that's a situation where we could, bring our astronauts home early, knowing that, you know, the relationship as it's constructed with our partners in Russia enable, continuous, operations of the space station, in a relatively safe way. So I think the, the the design of the International Space Station, really had a chance, you know, through its international partners had a chance to really showcase itself, over the last, over the last month or so. We'll head over to, well, right here.

Hi. Excuse me, will Robinson Smith with Spaceflight Now. Thank you for taking the time, to the administrator, during your remarks with Steve syslog, a few mentioned, earlier today, I guess yesterday that there were, series of many wet dress rehearsals for the SLS rocket. I wonder if you can go into a little more detail on this particular stage of the testing. And, if that was able to inform a date for the the full next wet dress rehearsal.

Thanks. Sure. So I think we're going to, provide additional details on that tomorrow. The teams wanted to have a chance to get together and review the data before taking, a position on whether or not we are going to advance to a full wet dress to or undertake, additional kind of mini tests. This should make a lot of sense.

Right on Artemis one, we were combating, hydrogen leaks multiple times on that. We obviously encountered that again. On the, Artemis two wet dress rehearsal. We already communicated through a blog that we, we replaced, some seals, and now we want to do as many tests as we possibly can before stepping into a full wet dress operation again to just gain confidence. We will provide more details tomorrow, at least from some of the early, views we did not see some of the leaks.

For the portion of the test we were running that at a comparable period during the full Artemis two wet dress we did. So it's an early indication, but we are, we'll share more details. We get into it tomorrow, but I think the idea is we will continue to do everything available, to gain confidence going into the the full wet dress mode right up here. Thank you. Sawyer Rosenstein with NSF.

A couple of timing questions in regards to, LC 40, about how long do you expect the booster to still be up there before it's able to be lowered? And can you still launch from 40 if the booster is vertical? And for the east side, about how long do you expect to be able to get back up to full speed after docking, kind of to where you were at that crew 11 pace prior to the return? I'll go first. Okay.

Thank you for the question. This does offer the opportunities for some pretty cool pictures. I would say, if that's what you're thinking. So obviously we want to make sure, as with every one of our operations, that we only step into that operation if we can do so safely. And so that includes all of the saving procedures after a booster lands, you know, making sure that it's able to be approached by personnel and perform the subsequent operations that need to happen to bring it horizontal and bring it into the hangar should we need to, perform a launch while the vehicle is vertical on the landing zone, we are able to do so.

But, nominally, the timelines don't look like that would necessarily be required. I'd say 5 to 7 days is generally the time period of crew handover. They'll actually start doing some work as they're doing some of that handover. So the first three days handover after that they'll be packing space X 33 and getting it ready to come home. So give them about a week and then they'll be up to speed and kind of working at full pace mode right up here.

Yes. Verdict. With the National Space Society and for Administrator Isaacman and any of the other panels, it's an exciting week here with the Vulcan launch of SpaceX, Falcon nine and Crew Dragon, and with Artemis two on the launch pad. And while it didn't align, was there could have been a chance where you had two crewed launches in a matter of days. So hopefully that will happen soon.

Just wanted to see what kind of preparations in terms of mission management, infrastructure, human resource, human resources in order to make that happen in the future? Well, there were yeah, I this was one of the first things I was briefed on after, after being sworn into this role is what do we do in a circumstance where we are launching to, human missions from Kennedy Space Center? In short, proximity. I mean, everything from two different suit up rooms, which we, we have available to us here. That was, we were giving consideration to how we would, stage our, our recovery forces for all the various scenarios.

And I was thinking, what, what a great problem to have. Right. Now, of course, obviously, we went through the motions. And, this is why we kept crew 12, in, in a position where they could launch, as early as, as February 11th. Obviously took, took today's window and then, we were not going to really, target a specific date until after we completed White dress, and that conflict was, alleviated.

But it is one that I certainly hope we have with great frequency going forward. We'll continue our regular spectrum space news. Thank you for taking our questions. Minister, Isaacman, you've been on your own crewed missions in the past, but how did it feel to see the first crewed mission as NASA's new administrator today? That is a good question.

Well, it was it was obviously wonderful to be back here at Kennedy Space Center and see everything, in action from, slightly different perspective, for sure. Felt like I might have had the, you know, second best seat, could have today as I was going into, into the operations. But, it was, it was just wonderful to see everything, in motion. Felt very privileged to be here alongside an extraordinary team preparing for an excellent mission like crew 12. So it's great to watch it.

We'll head right up here. To the the metric year on the US. This is for administrator. If I may, if I may just press you a bit further on your cooperation with the Russians, what specifically do you have in mind? And do you plan to hold talks with your counterpart, Mr.

McCallum, of any time soon, and perhaps travel to become their, So I believe everything you just ask is in, some degree of work right now. I am certainly, planning to attend the next, Soyuz launch. Crewed Soyuz launch. Good friend, that's going to be going up on that mission, so be hard to imagine to miss it. But I know that we're, making preparations for a, a discussion with my counterpart at the earliest opportunity.

The, you know, the space station is going to still be up there for a long time. There is a lot that we need to accomplish together, in the years ahead. Certainly a lot of opportunity for good conversation. And we'll head over here to the back. Yes.

Yeah. Right there. Thank you so much. Emily Morton from series Best Friends. Thank you so much for taking my question.

Do you already know who's going to perform the Eva on board? And is Sophie's going to perform one? Thank you. Yeah. We are still working on the the crew tasking for that for the two EVAs with all of the re plans that we did.

So we'll get that out. Maybe just to complement. She's definitely ready. But as Dina said it will be part of the planning. We'll go over to you Marcia.

Hello. Marcia Dunn, associated press for administrator Isaacman. How how how late into, February. Can you keep dealing with, potential fuel leaks and other tests on the pad before you could. You know, you really need to to start trying to launch in March.

And I've heard the third or the advertised six days. I mean, what's what's the earliest in Marc Well, I would say first, we have a lot of time ahead of us. I mean, if you think about the last wet dress, in the proximity to the opening of the launch window in February, I mean, that was rather condensed compared to the timing we have available now. So we can do a lot of confidence tests, as we did yesterday, and I expect we probably will. We could undertake more than one wet dress if necessary.

We're going to make absolute most use of the time that we have leading up to the start of the window. You are correct. We are considering if there is, or if there are earlier opportunities. I think from my perspective, same. Let's, let's get through a good wet dress and then we can consider what, what date we may want to target.

But, that could potentially include the third. Irene. Thanks. Irene Klotz with Aviation Week. Jared, there was a report, recently that, OMB had directed some science, funding to either suspend or halt.

Can you explain what that is? And if that's actually missions or is that some logistics? Yeah. So I think I, I'm aware of what you're referring to. I mean, that was, you know, really incorrect reporting, very routine correspondence between the CFO office and our various, mission directorate and centers.

As we were gathering information as part of the apportionment process. So, I would I would definitely anyone who has any questions as it relates to those science missions to take, take a look at the NASA official quote, that was provided to the reporter, although I don't think they actually included the entirety of it makes very clear, that there are no missions. That are being canceled or terminated. This was entirely an information gathering exercise that has been completely routine. I can tell you any of those quotes that go out before, I have an opportunity to review in advance and fully stand behind.

And we have one question in the back over here. Thank you. Ken Kramer, SpaceX up close. Thanks for doing this. It was a spectacular launch.

Congratulations to everybody. I'm a scientist, and you just talked about science, and I'm not a chemist. I want to ask you about Mars. Since you already mentioned perseverance. She's collecting samples to bring back.

It's the best chance to find life beyond Earth. The budget was cut this year. I'd like to know, what is your position on Mars? Sample return. Are you going to fortify it?

Is it going to be a priority? I hope? Well, I mean, first just to I mean, just to clarify, I mean, you know, the the cancellation of the Mars sample return as it was constructed, you know, predated even this year's budget cycle. The way that was constructed was not, economical, nor would it have been really achievable. All that aside, I'm I interested in getting those samples back.

You bet. I mean, that said it many times. This is an opportunity for what could be the most consequential discovery in human history. And I do believe that, Congress made available additional, funds in the latest, appropriations for us to begin, you know, evaluating various possibilities and how we could potentially retrieve those samples. So it's certainly very early, but we've been given the opportunity to rethink our approach, hopefully be able to do it.

You know, in a very affordable and if there is, such a thing as an expedited way when you go to Mars and back. And we have a question online from James Dowling Healy from West Hartford Community Interactive. So we'll go to you, James. Good morning, James Dowling Healy, West Hartford Community Interactive. My question is for Administrator Isaacman.

Given the launch of this new mission and your robust public relations efforts, will we see the return of any of the paused outreach methods, such as the web version of spot? The station this week at NASA? NASA TV, or any of the archived, social media accounts. Thank you. I mean, we are certainly committed to being as transparent as we possibly can and keeping the public informed of all the exciting, you know, undertakings we have at NASA right now.

So, I can't necessarily comment on any comment on any of the specific avenues you mentioned. And I think it's probably very unlikely that we're bringing back any archives, social media accounts, maybe even if it's a relatively unpopular opinion. I actually think we should be consolidating further and trying to get more, you know, quality out than, than general quantity. I think that's one of the best ways to get the public engaged in our mission. But all that said, I can assure you, whatever the and as a, as somebody who is a, outside observer, for a long time, I'm certainly committed to increasing the rate of, information sharing with, with the interested community.

And it looks like we have one last question in the room. So we'll go over here, Aaron Gilchrist with NBC news. And my question administrator is actually in the same vein of this one. You just got, I'm curious about your message to folks who are not astro Files, people who maybe got up this morning and saw their first launch ever, or they woke their kids up to see their first launch ever. On on all the platform platforms where it was available.

What do you say to people to to help them understand why these launches, these missions are important, why they are of value to to folks who maybe aren't Astro files, you know, I mean, it's, to me, it's I guess it's just I have a bias here, but it's just hard to imagine that there were that many people haven't looked up, at the sky at night and wondered what's out there or not. I mean, we here at NASA are leading the greatest. You know what I think the greatest adventure in in human history and what we may find, what we could learn, which could have meaningful benefit back here on Earth, as it's proven throughout the entire history of the space program. New technology, economic potential, new sources of energy and power, and just satisfying the curiosity that we all might have. I think that, as a society, we invest an awful lot in trying to address, you know, the challenges of the day.

You know, the imperfections that are in life. And you can always put a small percentage, as we do in trying to make progress for the future and to inspire our kids to want to grow up and dream bigger. I think that's what we do here. And with that, if there are no more questions, we will wrap up this press conference. On the screen you will find a link that will take you to our crew.

12 coverage, and you can find all of our highlights from today's launch. Thanks for joining. The historic astronaut crew quarters, where SpaceX teams helped each crew member into their custom pressure suits before heading out, the crew paused for a final pre-launch tradition. You see it there, the card game gathering around the table. It's a way to set the tone and leave any bad luck behind.

Then it was time to step outside. The crew walked out to greet family, friends and supporters, following a path walk by every NASA astronaut since Apollo 7 in 1968. A short time later, the crew climbed into their Teslas, beginning the ride out to Launch Complex 48, escorted by security through Kennedy Space Center and onto the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. As they arrived at the pad, the crew got out and got their first close up look at the Falcon nine rocket that you see there. And then they walked across their crew access arm in pairs.

First, the commander pilot and the mission specialist, and then we saw him climb into Dragon and get into their seats for flight. Inside the spacecraft, seats were rotated into position and the suit checks were performed as the countdown continued. Ignition and liftoff. Go, Falcon! Go, Dragon and Godspeed.

Crew 12 and liftoff! Freedom flies! Bound for the International Space Station, 1. 7 million pounds of thrust now rolling Falcon nine for 12 people is pitching downrange, and all nine Merlin vehicles have lit. We're getting good call outs on the first stage.

Performance and propulsion so far.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from NASA. NASA material is generally not copyrighted and is in the public domain.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.