Artemis II splashes down after historic mission

Subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts. For early access, add free listening and bonus content to all of MS Now's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace. Why is this happening? Main Justice and more. Plus new episodes of all your favorite MS Now shows, Add Free, and Add Free Listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents, Burn Order. Subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts. Good evening from New York. I'm Ali Velsche. Visual contact has now been made with the space module integrity. As you can see, we are still waiting moments away from communication being re-established with the four astronauts who are on the historic Artemis II mission that has just returned from deep space. At this very moment, astronauts are in a capsule. It has now been seen. It has hurled through the atmosphere after traveling. Passing through 150,000 feet. Our trajectory is perfect. They are saying the trajectory of the re-entry of this is perfect. We've got NASA mission control. You will be going between me and mission control as we establish voice communication with that shuttle. Unusually, most nights I have my control room in one ear. Post-blackout communication check has just been made. Integrity, we have you loud and clear. There we go. Integrity has mission control loud and clear. Integrity now moments away, less than six minutes away. From splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after traveling roughly 700,000 miles to the moon and beyond the moon around it and back, traveling farther from Earth than any human has ever been. The re-entry speed of this capsule you're about to see topped out at nearly 25,000 miles per hour. At that speed, you'd get from New York to Los Angeles in six minutes. The horizon capsule has hit entry interface. That's the point where the craft encounters a significant atmospheric drag. That happened about five minutes ago just south of Hawaii, about 2,000 miles from the landing zone which is approaching right now, which is off the coast of San Diego. The re-entry communications have just been re-established with NASA mission control, which is what you're hearing in the background here. They've re-established that the crew is now in contact, which means the crew has made it through the re-entry into the atmosphere. This is a massive deal because the temperature that the crew would have been facing outside of their capsule was four to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This was also the most dangerous part of the mission because it's the part that had some question marks around it. The last time there was an Artemis spaceship in the air. There you go, there is the visual. You are now seeing the return of Artemis to Earth. You can now see that capsule. In the coming moments, you will see three parachutes deploy. The parachutes will slow the descent speed of that capsule to below 20 miles per hour. It'll splash down at somewhere between 17 and 19 miles per hour. We are now less than five minutes away from that. Recovery teams are on scene. NASA is on scene. The amphibious transport ship, the USS John P. Murtha, are standing by near the landing area. All have made visual contact, and now we have communications contact with the space module. There is debris from the Orion because of the parachutes. The recovery crews are at some distance from where the landing site will be. The four astronauts, by the way, are the Americans, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Cook, and the Canadian Jeremy Hansen. They are returning to Earth nine days, one hour and 32 minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. They are the first humans to orbit the Moon in more than half a century. I want to stay on this picture, but I want to tell you who I've got with me. Bill Dalton is a former chief of staff at NASA. He has participated in several splashdown recoveries. There you go. You see the parachutes. Let's look at this. And Houston were visual two drogues out the window. All right, those two parachutes are going to slow. Next up, the deployment of pilot parachutes that will pull the main shoots out. Time to splash down three minutes and 10 seconds. Three minutes and 10 seconds. I'll be stopping intermittently to let you hear NASA mission control as they narrate exactly what you're looking at. I'm also joined by Bill Nelson, who was a former director of NASA. We see the same on board. All right, we are three minutes away from touchdown. Also with me is David Ariosto. He's the author of a very brand new book. It's literally I don't think it's two weeks old. It's called Open Space from Earth to eternity, the global race to explore and conquer the cosmos. They're standing by. Let me just I wanted to stay on this shot. This is the integrity module coming back to Earth. This is, of course, not the rocket that went up. That was a very big rocket. This was a part and there we go. We've separated. Now we've got the pilot parachutes and now you are seeing full descent into the Pacific Ocean. Again, we are under three minutes away now from landing. Got a color shot of that on the right. Search and recovery beacon is we're slowing the craft down. That's what these parachutes are doing that we are trying to achieve a speed of under 20 miles per hour, somewhere between 17 and 19 miles per hour is ideal for settling into the Pacific Ocean. That's we're looking at. This is off. It's not entirely close to San Diego, but it's off the coast of San Diego. This is what will happen is the craft will go into the water. They will be approached by Navy divers who will check the atmosphere to make sure everything's safe. They'll then have medics check them. The first thing that happens when that hatch door opens is that medics will check the astronauts to make sure they're OK. If they're OK, they will be gradually moved to a helicopter, which will take them to the ship, the Mertha. And from there, it won't be tonight. They will spend the night at least on the ship before returning to land. They'll have complete medical checks to see how they are. But we are now probably one minute away from the landing of the integrity module of Artemis 2 in the Pacific Ocean, the return of four astronauts who have now gone around the moon, something that has not been done for more than 50 years. These are the people in that capsule who have been the farthest from Earth in the entire history of humanity. Let's listen in to NASA mission control. One minute. Less than one minute to splash down. Passing through one thousand feet. Again, we are slowing this craft down to under 20 miles per hour. That is the speed at which it will intersect with the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego with four astronauts aboard who have reestablished contact with national mission control and reporting in that everything is OK after passing through the atmosphere. Use the integrity swashdown sending post landing command now. Splashdown confirmed. Copy splashdown waiting on VLDR. Splashdown confirmed at 7 0 7 p.m. Central Time, 5 0 7 p.m. Pacific Time. From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete. Integrity's astronauts back on Earth. And you are watching history. The astronauts are back on Earth. Bell Dalton, former Chief of Staff NASA. And the landing and support officer reports the vehicle is stable one. We still will be deploying the crew module upriding system to maintain that orientation. A perfect bullseye splashdown for integrity and its four astronauts. Bell Dalton and David Arioster are both with me now. Bell, let me just get your thought right now. What's your thinking? What's going through your mind as you watch this, as they say, a bullseye splashdown? Bullseye splashdown indeed. First of all, thanks so much for having me here to share in this incredible experience. What's going through my mind right now is I am ecstatic. I am relieved in some respects. Of course, we still have the rest of the recovery to go, but to hear read, confirm, splashdown, and through, as you've already noted, some of the most dangerous parts of this mission. I mean, it's a great experience. It is. It is crazy. And David, you have been following this and living this so closely for all of these years. This is that little piece of reality that while America is watching other things and while the world is watching other things, and boy, it looks like we're always watching other things, this is the future that is unfolding in front of us. Oh, what a bright spot. What a bright spot in terms of a long-standing program that has finally come to fruition at least in the last few years. In terms of a long-standing program that has finally come to fruition at least in terms of that circumnavigation of the moon. But I'll tell you what, those in Washington and Cape Canaveral and elsewhere are not the only ones watching. I'm sure those in Beijing are paying attention as well as this has been sort of a geopolitical engine behind who reaches the lunar surface first. So this is sort of a major accomplishment. There's a lot more work to be done. Bale, we also have a shot which we'll put on one of the ships that are nearby. As you mentioned, what most people think of as the most dangerous part, obviously there's remarkable danger upon launch and passing through the Earth's atmosphere, then returning and passing through the Earth's atmosphere. What we're watching on screen are naval divers who are going to be approaching the vessel, the module to ensure that everything is safe around them. The most serious part is over, but these astronauts' bodies have been through something remarkable for the last 10 days, which is why the first people who will make contact with them in person are medics. Yeah, absolutely. This is a really fun thing for us as Americans to watch here with our Navy partners and NASA partners, and of course there's the Air Force involved in controlling the airspace throughout. So this is just an incredible version of America that we are seeing right here with all of these people who are serving our country in one way or another to execute this last part of the mission. But certainly, you know, this crew, Reid and Victor and Christina and Jeremy have set records, as you already noted at the top of the broadcast. They set another record on reentry coming in at Mach 32, fastest crewed reentry in our space programs history. So again, this is just amazing stuff to see. And we're exactly right. I mean, this is another step for NASA and for the United States and its partners in space to show the world who is the leader in research, development and technology in our space. So let's talk about that, David, because there are people watching this who will remember the last time a crew came back from the moon. And that was 1972. Explain to me why it is important that we are back on the moon. What happens, and of course we're not back on the moon, we didn't land on the moon this time around, but we are now going to have a crewed mission to the moon and then possibly yearly crewed missions to the moon thereafter, including building a lunar base from which to explore deep space. Why does all this matter? Well, yeah, I think we have to remember that this is a program that started during the first Trump administration. And what was unique about it in many ways was that it had a degree of continuity with the Biden administration. So this is a program now that has carried through three administrations and the hardware dates back pretty far. I mean, some of the engineers that are working on this are younger than some of the hardware that's been refurbished. So, you know, the push back to the moon, I think, in the context of not only what American space policy means in the context of all of this new commercial activity that we've seen, but also, as I mentioned earlier, just the fact that China has plans to put the Tyconauts on the lunar surface by 2030. This Artemis program is 2028, and that's ambitious by most constructs. But if you look at the moon, not necessarily in terms of discovery and exploration, but as a means of infrastructure and strategic influence and building and pipelines and telecoms and all of the things that you need to extend influence, the nature of how commercial intersex with governments intersects with the geopolitics that are really pushing this, not unlike what was happening during the days of the first space race with the Soviet Union. The difference, mind you, is that there's a heck of a lot more leaning on commercial sector, meaning spacex and Blue Origin, who have never done something quite like this before. So, you know, this is an amazing accomplishment today, but gosh, there's a lot more to be done in terms of landing on that lunar south pole, which is so much different than landing where the Apollo astronauts landed. Bill, talk to us a bit more about that. Explain to people who are sitting here saying, didn't we go to the moon 50 years ago? Why are we going back to the moon? What does that help us do in terms of establishing both superiority and just sort of staying on top of advances as it relates to space? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, we're going to a different part of the moon this time. With all respect, of course, to our Apollo program, you know, the point there was, can we do this? And what are the operations that we need to do to get it done expeditiously and to get it done so that we can say that we were there first? With these Artemis campaign missions, we're going to a different part of the moon. We're going to the south pole, where we think that there are water ice resources. And if there are, you know, part of our mission is to go there to learn how to live, to work, to cultivate resources, and to set up infrastructure to help inform, sorry, those sounds of Rob Navias are always calming and soothing to my ears. So I'll pause here for what he has to say. Will you copy? I did. You see the smile on my face. It's just so amazing to hear it. I'm just going to be careful with the SARS-Sat phone on board. But that's not an issue. What is more important is that the vehicle is solid. No issues as we begin the power down of the vehicle to begin the recovery process. Rob Navias is great. He always tells it to us straight. Yeah. And he's telling us the most important parts. There are no serious issues so far. Obviously there's a lot to unfold here. We have to get those crews have to get right to the vessel. They got to get those medics in there, but they have reported all as well. So continue what you were telling me. There are people who are going to say, what does that do for us? Going to the south pole of the moon, figuring out their resources there, figuring out whether we can build an infrastructure to what end? Yeah. Well, I think just from the exploration side of it, this is going to help inform how we explore further into our solar system and further through the cosmos with crewed missions, with human missions. And so we're going to learn how to live and work on the surface of the moon to inform how we can do that on Mars. And there's a whole other sector of this as well in which we talk about ensuring that this exploration is done in a responsible way and ensuring that the people who are doing it are working as partners and not to gain some high ground in space to the detriment of us back on Earth. Also, the south pole is an incredibly hard place to land and there's only a very few spots that you can land safely close enough to the resources but far enough away to be able to set up the infrastructure that you need. So it's a limited amount of space, so it's very important for us to get there first. And it's important for us to establish those exploration zones first as we talk about in the Artemis Accords for a number of different reasons. David, you know, watching what we're watching right now, this is this module that has landed in the water. We've seen this, if you've been watching launches and landings in the last few years, you've seen this as kind of the way it goes. But there was a time when we took off on space shuttles and we landed like an airplane. Does this feel like we've gone a little back in time? Well, I mean, it's, listen, you can't see one of these capsules come back and you can't talk about the lunar surface and not have visions of black and white imagery that harken back to the Apollo program in the summer of 69 when that was truly a captivating moment for the global audience. You know, some of the people I spoke to in writing my book globally, I mean, people in Iran, people in Jamaica, people across Latin America, in Europe, in Asia, just remember that moment in 1969 as sort of this galvanizing moment in which we, humanity, set foot on the lunar surface for the first time. It's a little bit different this time, however, in the sense that, you know, you have robotic landers that are landing there. We had intuitive machines craft land there in 2024. And now there's a very clear cut sort of space race that's sort of taking shape in all of this. I want to kind of go back to one of the questions that you asked in terms of to what end. And I think this is really important question in terms of the crux of all of this. Moon is now not necessarily just an avenue of exploration and discovery. It is largely considered a strategic asset and you can say that because not only are Chinese assets and Chinese exploration units sort of in development, they've already tested the lander system. Long March 10 is fast in development. Their expectation is 2030. But you see outgrowth in low earth orbit. You see CIS lunar and that's starting to be populated. You see the moon. So you see these in sort of a collection of nodes along a supply chain. And so when you talk about strategic influence, you talk about communications, infrastructure mining, all of this is just sort of this brand new world in frontier. And you start usually with the water and that water by most accounts is right there on the lunar south. So if we're exploring, we're going to start there. But if you look at budgets, I mean Space Force has already has projected budget for an 80% increase by next year. Pentagon funding is up to about 1.5 trillion. I'm going to stop you for a second. I just want to tell you what's going on here. We had to have naval boats go up to the vessel to determine whether there's toxicity, any gases in the area, to make sure that it's safe for the recovery crews to go in. They have reported back that there is no toxicity and it is safe now for the boats to land. And that's what we're looking at. I did hear a call of no joy, which typically in aviation space or nautical missions means that there's been a lack of either contact or visual contact somewhere. So I think that may have to do with something they were describing a few moments ago about a radio that's not working. They did make sure to emphasize that this is not a serious matter in any fashion. Otherwise everything seems to be going as planned. You now see recovery vessel. Let's listen in for a second. We're just watching now as the recovery vessel is coming. You can relay to recovery that we hear them, but it does not. But it does not appear so they are hearing us. Houston copies and read just to confirm you are pushing the PTT on the radio. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. Houston. So as we continue to sort out the communications between integrity and the recovery teams, we are standing by for the initiation of the power down procedures that, as you see, the recovery teams are moving towards the side of the capsule. major event will be the erection of that large inflatable raft called the front porch that will be the port of call for the crew as they're being extracted one by one from the vehicle. Mae Jefferson is joining us by the way. Mae is a former astronaut, first woman of color, to have gone to space where she spent eight days aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. Mae, welcome. We're just we're going to talk to you and listen in at the same time. So the no joy that they declared was that they are not it seems like the crew is not able to communicate with the recovery teams that are right in front of them. You heard mission control saying to read Weisman, the commander, are you pressing the PTT button, PTT being pushed to talk? I mean these are very well trained astronauts they probably know which buttons to push but there's a certain amount of checking that has to go through in aeronautics and aviation where when something doesn't go right, you go through the checklist of what could be wrong. This doesn't seem to be a serious matter but they can't actually couple up and get the astronauts out until they've established communication. Well, I'm not having worked in a bin with a capsule but they certainly can maybe be able to look inside and see what's going on but they're going to make sure that everything is working well. So everything was going well. They got a positive check. We lose you Mae. Reentry? No. I think I'm still here. No. Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I think you and I are having a PTT issue. Well, it's happening all the way around but because they did get a positive response on reentry, you know, people are probably very comfortable. So now it's just figuring out why it's not working. Yes. And then they'll figure out how to do that. Thank you for saying that. That's a really important thing because on reentry, they had a visual of the craft long before they had audio communication. They were able to see that it was intact but they then heard from them and they said everything was okay. So and then they watched what looked to be a picture perfect landing. So this is again, this is the point of this is that it all has to be done by the book. They're not cutting any corners but it does not appear to be that there's any looming danger. Right. And then the other thing, there will also be a mechanism for the astronauts if they had to get out themselves but you remember having a doiner, well maybe we don't remember but have a doiner poll mission as well. So it's not the best thing but there are multiple mechanisms to go through. So this is just one of the things that we need to wait through. I want to just, Mae, I just want to quickly go over to Josh Einiger, our reporter, who's following us from mission control to tell us what's going on. Josh, what is, what's happening at the moment? It has looked picture perfect up until now but there is some sort of a communication issue going on as far as I can determine but I think you probably know more than I do. Yeah, well Ali, we've been listening here at Huston, Johnson Space Center in Houston to this as you've been talking and you know the irony is they've been through this whole voyage, this whole mission, this whole thing that went perfectly by any measure, only to be stymied by communications problems once they return to Earth and that's really what's happening now. So the crew of Integrity just reported back to mission control. They're having issues communicating with what they call the master diver who clearly is in charge of the operation to retrieve them from the space capsule. But they can talk, but other people can talk to each other, right? The master diver can talk to control and the crew can talk to control. These two just can't talk to each other. They're attempting to relay now through mission control and they're actually, they just, mission control just told Integrity they're actually going to try calling them on a phone and try to relay messages that way but obviously they need to be able to communicate effectively in both directions. One side can hear the other and it's a little bit unclear which side that is, whether it's the crew that can hear the diver or the diver that who can hear the crew, but obviously they need to be able to communicate to make sure that it's safe before the the crews on the, surrounding the capsule can approach it and so that's the delay here. Obviously I think it's safe to say these four astronauts would like very much to get off Orion but clearly it looks like they're going to have to wait a little while longer while they try to figure out this comms issue. Bill, talk to me about that for a second. Most of us have not gone into space but most of us have been on a long drive where you just want to get out where you are. I mean these people have been around to the moon and back. They've gone further than any other human has been from earth. They're back down. They know full well this is going to be a full day before they are flown back to Houston. But boy what do you think is going on in that capsule right now? Are they cool because it all worked and they're fine and they'll get out eventually or are they like I need to get out of this thing? Well I am a bad substitute for Dr. Jemison who has actually been to space and returned but knowing this crew and knowing how much time they've spent together in training in that capsule and in the simulator I think they're probably enjoying a little bit of a laugh right here at the end of the mission. I know Reed as a F-18 pilot, test pilot and former chief astronaut is really enjoying being told how to push the PTT on a radio that he's probably trained for hours on. But that's how these things go sometimes. Have you ever been a part of any kind of mission like this in the military or at NASA you know comms are always the hardest part and so I think they're probably having a little bit of humor here in the capsule as they're waiting to get extracted. And David you've talked to a lot of astronauts. This is stuff they learn down pat. Right? They things happen and they know how to run through checklists and establish what's going on. It sounds like it's a bit of a hiccup, a bit of a glitch but to them this is not not out of the ordinary. You know it's almost you almost wonder if the context of the calling IT to have them tell you to turn it off and back on in terms of the system. I mean you know hopefully this is sort of the ultimate just waiting on the tarmac after a long flight type of analogy here but to your point Ali I mean you know these astronauts go through enormous amounts of training and you know yes a lot of these flight systems are now automated but you know I think when we look at this and you look at some of the resumes of some of these individuals they just you know they kind of make you feel bad about yourself in terms of just the sheer nature and prowess and academic and mechanical understanding of how these systems work which is almost sort of part and parcel of the space industry itself. I mean you know being down at some of these factory yards and NASA and other places you do see these motley crews of physicists, narrow space engineers and machinists all sort of working together and I think in many ways that that's sort of the the joy or the wonder of space in the sense that you know a lot of these things are not subjective either you have a successful mission or not and you know by all accounts this was a pretty successful mission notwithstanding you know some helium leaks earlier on in the flight which seemed to be you know spawning some conversations about redesigns for Artemis 4 but by and large up until this communications issue right now you know this is a win for the artist program. Yeah and you're seeing you can see the body language those people on the boat there that everybody is treating this as a win they feel like it's a win. Bill there is no space mission that either is successful or not successful in which there aren't lots of takeaways and redesigns and things that we've learned and there's a sort of a takeaway for the rest of us in humanity that these things that they learn about what happens in space and reentry and landing end up becoming technologies that we all benefit from. Yeah absolutely one of my favorite things to see at the at the end of every year when I was with administrator Nelson helping to lead NASA is the spin-off book and just we have you know the folks at NASA who do these incredible inventions and learn from space and learn from the processes of building things that are going to have to go into space you know results and a number of different patents which are all now used for the public good and that that's always something to watch for at the end of the year when NASA puts out the the spin-off book it's it's really fun to see you know what good stewardship of tax dollars can can present at the end of the year through these investments in NASA throughout the entire agency. You're looking at the space module integrity part of the Artemis II mission it is in the Pacific Ocean it has landed well what's going to happen next is you've got boats around there you're going to see those boats there they've been going up to it and around it but you'll see a big raft inflate that'll be called the front porch that's how the astronauts will emerge one by one they will be checked by medics they will be removed to boats they'll then get on the helicopters and be taken to the John P. Murtha which is standing by but talking about stewards of your money and what you do with these things and the spin-off book we are joined by the former United States Senator Bill Nelson himself a former astronaut and the former administrator of NASA in the Biden administration it is great to see you again senator Nelson how you feeling tonight? exceptionally well and relieved the long pole in the tent was the heat shield it's a one-of-a-kind for the next mission there'll be an entirely new heat shield so all of this worked perfectly and I say it's been a long time coming this has spanned multi administrations and it actually started back during George W. Bush Obama changed that and that's when Senator K. Bailey Hutchinson and I got into it and set the course of the building of this rocket and so then it's come through Obama it's come through Trump one it's come through Biden when Bale and I were in charge and then it is now in Trump too so it's been a long time coming but this is the beginning of another exciting future they've just confirmed that the power down is complete the power down of the module is complete which means we are now going to move to the next stage which is the evacuation of those four astronauts onto that raft they will not go together they'll go out one by one they'll be checked by medics and then they will be removed by helicopter to a nearby boat and where they will remain overnight until they are put on an airplane we'll be watching that very closely senator there are very few things that you can describe that go on you know successive administrations or very few things today that are not politicized there are you know we've got less of a shared experience as humanity about watching launches and landings then then we used to this feels like the old days in some sense what do you say to people who aren't sure of the value of why we're covering this and why they are watching this right now well this feels like the old days because nasa brings people together instead of dividing and nasa is basically a bipartisan program and that's why there's such wide support in the congress for nasa but when you talk about is this worth it well do you think mr is do you think cat scans do you think the camera in your cell phone all of which have come out of the technology that has been developed for our space program 50 years ago we went to the moon and we learned how to micromaniaturize everything and and thus we're in this micromaniaturization revolution that continues to get smaller and smaller and that's what's so exciting about what nasa's doing now we're not going to the moon just to go to the moon we're going to the moon for the purpose of learning how to live in that hostile environment how to invent and create so we can go farther and we're going to mars uh may jemisin's back with us may uh i want to go on and get an update from you because we can we now have two people on on our air who have been in space but this is um this is a great moment they've powered down they've sort of figured out their communications issues uh they're going to come out soon what happens next these these astronauts i'm sure want to just talk to everybody and tell everybody everything that's going on but a they have to have a proper debrief first of everything that went wrong little things went wrong like the toilet didn't operate properly in the beginning but they are going to get physical checks um your body does change in space and uh after a bit of a so so here's a couple of things where we really want to pay attention to what happened and the physical condition right so there will be the medical checks to make sure everybody is well but also remember there's going to be a lot of data collection because we really want to understand what happens to people in weightlessness it helps to develop procedures for the crews that come back right and one of the things that's really interesting is when you're in space in microgravity a little bit of gravity your muscles aren't working they don't have to do a lot of work so they start to deteriorate your heart is a muscle it doesn't have to pump blood against the same column of of blood in the same weight of blood when it's on earth so it deteriorates a little bit your cardiovascular system so all of those when you get back down to earth have to start working again and so that's one of the things they're testing but because we pay attention to that when people actually land then we know that there's some countermeasures so sometime before everybody came back they did what is called fluid loading to get fluid back into the cardiovascular system all of those things happen to keep people healthy and to make sure that they're okay when they get back but there is also just testing right because the people who are in the crew are also experimental subjects and test subjects because we don't know everything about space and what happens to you so we keep a longitudinal study on this we have heard that they are in a good physical condition uh the first the first evaluation of them again there'll be much more medical testing done over the next few hours there are going to be helicopters when they are removed into the helicopters there'll be two astronauts per helicopter going to the the ship the commander Reese Weissman as is always the case in military style missions or aeronautic missions or naval missions the commander will be the last person off the vessel David Ariosto to something that the senator Nelson was saying it is important to do this for a lot of reasons but it's also important to realize that if America and NASA don't do this and I will point out there are cooperation with other governments involved in this mission other people are doing it China is definitely doing this and there are lots of other countries in the world that have decided that space is a necessary frontier for them to pursue oh absolutely absolutely I mean there are more than 70 nations at this point that have space programs and and China and Russia and well to some extent at one point Iran did I don't think that's the case anymore but you know there's a whole host of reasons to be operating in space particularly in lower Thorbit where the predominance of our assets are you know we're talking about satellites and telecoms and a lot of more military infrastructure up there so yes it's sort of that sun zoo ultimate high ground type of modality and when you extend that out and you look at mining capabilities and you look at sort of the downstream effects that senator mount nelson was describing in terms of you know we don't know what we don't know and what came out of the space program in the 1960s and 70s were CAT scans and MRIs and cell phone technology and all the things that kind of have these these hard and fast effects but there's something else right there is this there there is the soft power of the inspiration that it that it does draw and it draws across sciences and I think that that can't be minimized and when you when you look at long-term trajectories in terms of where we're putting our dollars where where our phd's and stem are graduating the question then becomes you know who gets to own the future who gets to set the terms for where this new infrastructure in this new industrial layer starts starts to unfold and I think that principally is why so much effort in terms of investment VC community the the the military apparatus through pentagon and DARPA but also of course NASA in terms of some of these missions becomes so paramount in terms of this next space race so it is sort of this competition in this race in terms of who gets to set the guides post for what comes next. Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it. And now we're friends and colleagues and on our podcast Clock It we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics. Clock It is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news so you can start to clock it too. Clock It with Simone Eugene all episodes available now. So we're still looking at this module we've not seen what's called the front porch it's called a front porch because it's a big raft it's an insoluble raft that is is how they emerge from this thing to then be removed we haven't seen the front porch come out yet but we do need we did need to know that it was powered down the module was powered down that has been confirmed initial reports are that the astronauts the four astronauts three Americans one Canadian are in good physical condition and the the evacuation now continues of them. Senator Nelson to David's point this is important that the inspiration the idea that as as as kids we see rockets launch into space and we see these astronauts and then we want to either be the astronauts or we want to be the physicists or we want to be the mechanics or we want to be the scientists who do this that is a it's an intangible thing that America really relies on in moments like this. It absolutely is and if there's any doubt of that just walk into any classroom particularly if you have a blue suit on and watch how you immediately have the attention of those students or go to any foreign country Baila and I went all over the earth uh it was unusual that a president of a country did not want to see NASA that is the the inspirational power because this bunch of people that I call wizards NASA folks pull off these impossible things over and over by the way I'm I'm amused you see the boats that are coming up right now to the capsule I've been looking at those waves to see if those swells were high you've got two Navy guys inside you've got a civilian astronaut Christina and then you've got a Canadian Air Force pilot in there I wonder if anybody's getting seasick right just bobbing about in the ocean right now yeah it doesn't look like these swells are too much no they were at some point they were four feet the the danger point is six feet by the way if they if they exceeded six feet they would have to consider an alternate to the landing obviously they're all such weather conditions they have to think about but they never got past four feet they look lower than that now but it's hard to see because we don't have good angles on this kind of stuff we're just watching now because as these vessels get closer and they've been roaming around the the module for a while the next thing we're waiting to see is the deployment of what's called the the front porch the the raft you'll see it it'll be colorful and that's where you will see the first interaction between those divers and the and the the the astronauts on the module the the first people who will be in touch with them are medics uh bail i want to i want to just mention something that you know david pointed out when we first started this broadcast lots of our our viewers are watching those lots of americans are watching this right now i'm sure on all sorts of channels and uh on their phones but this is being watched around the world i'm trying as hard as i can in this hour for just one hour to stay away from all the politics that are going on but it is it is something everybody's watching and is something that america can still say that they are the best at yeah absolutely i think what we're looking at is you know the power uh that the united states has you know for instance the john p martha that's out there you know a landing ship dock that's out there that takes sailors and marines uh overseas and conducts amphibious landings and littoral areas uh the helicopters that are providing a safe overwatch here with their systems and forward-looking infrared uh those are the same types of helicopters that i flew in combat in iraq and afghanistan and the horn of africa what we're seeing now is that the the prowess of american ingenuity and the types of engineering that we can do when we do have successful public private partnerships and we do have successful interagency partnerships to take these things that are multi-mission and multi-purpose uh and use them for good and also to use them when our power projection abroad is the number one mission hey uh may let me ask you about this because all astronauts tell me this that when you go away from earth and you look back on it your humanity becomes a little bigger right the the fights that we have on earth on our in our own countries and with other countries uh minimize a little bit the fact that when you stand when we when astronauts lived in the international uh space uh station together uh national and ethnic differences fell away a little bit uh space does have the effect of bringing us together let me let me put a little bit different spin on this it depends on who you were when you went up so when i went up into space i never thought that the earth was naturally divided by these maps and these lines it did help me to understand you know our connectedness but also our connectedness with the whole universe i want to bring something into perspective the reason why this is so exciting is not just our only because we were able to do it whether it was in the 60s or otherwise but it's because space is something that connects with people in every country whether you're a child or an adult space was where we did some of our first uh technologies we learned to navigate around the earth using the stars we learned how we learned how to plan some of our first mythologies with every country in this world every nation every culture every society has been a part of the background and i really think it's the sky that really connects us and involves us and when i look at this uh where we are right now today with the Artemis missions there are a lot of countries involved yes the united states hope to put this together but the service module is a european service module yes i know that there many different engineers who come from other countries who work at nasa who work in different areas and that's part of it and i think that's the story so when the we tell the story of um this Artemis 2 mission is having the first woman in the world to go to the moon the first person of color in the world to go to the moon we have a canadian aboard another person who's not from the united states that inclusiveness that diversity i think that's the story about the evolution of where we're gone and what we have to do and we will get the most out of space when we have more perspectives i mean i could go on about when we what we do when we're in low earth orbit i think people talk about spin-offs and that's the term but their capabilities that are available in earth orbit in microgravity that are really important that we can we can use it as a platform for looking back at the earth right to help with agriculture and other things we can understand how other planets form which helps us to understand what happens to the earth there are many things that are there with space exploration which are just not spin-offs or you know our projection of militaries might it's really about how we can use this really profound set of capabilities thank you for that perspective it's important i want to bring in a third for our astronaut we're filling up our screen with astronauts which i love jim beggin flew on two missions on board the space shuttle discovery and columbia in 1989 and 1991 jim welcome to the coverage thank you for being with us what are you what are you thinking as you're watching this with us well it's good to see us uh go back around the moon and back uh since we haven't done this for you know pushing 60 years so it's good to see get the show on road what are you uh what are the tell me what the astronauts are thinking i'm trying to glean that from uh from uh from the senator and from dr jemison uh i'm sure they want to get out they're going to get out looks like they're safe everything's fine but they're still they're still in there bobbing around in the ocean well i would imagine a couple things you know it's it's probably fairly warm in there now because as you heat up it it slowly gets conducted through so it's probably warm they'd like to get out there you know i don't know if they were going to be seasick or not but that could be but i'm sure they're glad they're back they're glad that entry went well and they had a successful mission and this was a test mission right this is the checkout of the vehicle the first time we've had a crew on board and many of the systems the environmental control system among others it was the first time they had flown so there was a lot of things that needed to be learned to see if what we learned on earth and the testing and all the design effort that went into that actually were born out in flight and that's what this was about a checkout flight so i'm glad they're i'm sure they're glad they're done and i'm sure they glad it went well and then tree came and uh went as everybody hoped it would go and jim this a good point by the way because to some degree they're all always test missions right it's always about doing the next thing what can you accomplish on this mission that you didn't in the last mission what went wrong that can be fixed for the next mission i think that's right and and you know you might think about it like they'll talk about in the commercial world about continuous improvement certainly spaceflight and aviation in general the debriefs are often the most important part of the mission where you learn how did things go well where didn't they go well where could you do it better and we get so few opportunities to fly compared to when you think about commercial flying or something like that flight that you know the level of maturity and experience is really very low compared to what you see on in commercial flight so uh we're really even when we've flown tens of missions that's nothing compared to you know regular commercial flights so there's always things being learned i think there's ever been a flight that there weren't lessons learned from that flight that were then employed in future operations i want to look at what's going on right now you can now see that they have made contact there's been physical contact made between that boat and uh and the the module um what looked like they were waving at them so i don't know if there's a window they can see or maybe they were just trying to grapple at stuff but right beyond this shot you can see there's a another vessel with a lot more people on it so it looks like they're getting ready to you see they're pulling there there we go they're they're they're sort of grabbing on to things on the module i guess they're trying to stabilize it to launch the uh the raft the raft is attached to the module it's called that they call it the front porch basically because it's like coming out on your front porch um and then again one of the things that happens first jim it really is always the thing that happens first when they make contact with astronauts is they get the medical checks was that the same thing when you came off the shuttle the shuttle yeah they they they didn't come on board usually they uh would get you as soon as you came off my second flight was a life science and space lab so they were very concerned to monitor everything so they you know just get a quick look at everybody make sure everybody's able to safely you know ambulate get around and then um and then give you a more thorough exam once they get you back to the clinic and this in this case will be they get shipboard so uh you know the crew has not been you know compared to station this is very short duration mission more like shuttle used to be so there shouldn't be huge physiologic changes and and uh you know they'll they'll certainly see differences and i think all crew see for the first few days you're getting your she legs and all but it wouldn't be anything like many of them or have already experienced an ISS so she and I reconfigured to them Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it and now we're friends and colleagues and on our podcast clock it we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news so you can start to clock it too clock it with Simone and Eugene all episodes available now Senator Nelson this is an important point because you talked about MRIs you talked about the technologies that we've we've gained from space but because of the actual way that your cells act your body acts in space the fact that you age differently means you can grow plants a little faster in space you can find cures for diseases but but more more accurately in space if you were able to do them at scale so there's some real reasons to have industrial development in space it could could end up with faster cures for some of the sicknesses we we feel or faster development of medication well that's happening as we speak on the international space station they're working with different pharmaceutical products one thing they've already improved because of protein crystallization of some cancer drugs the ability for example in quetruta a very successful drug to be able to instead of the long four hour IV they've shortened it to about 20 minutes and they are now because of what they learned on the station they're going to be able to give it as a shot so there's one byproduct in uh in pharmaceutical products i want to mention uh and when i looked back at the earth as we orbited in the space shuttle i looked through the eyes of a politician and when i looked i did not see political division and i did not see racial division and i did not see religious division what i saw was we were all in this together as citizens of planet earth and that is a profound uh effect on someone who is sensitive to all of the division and and hatred that's going on on the face of the earth below um i wish we could send every elected official into space because they're bound to come back with a different perspective well this is dr jemison i want to i want to sound on that to that because you were talking about this a that's true but b you're in awful close quarters whether it's here or on a shuttle or on uh on the space station you're just an awful close quarters you actually have to learn to get along uh on these things tell me about that did you did you all establish that camaraderie before your missions or did some of it get established on the missions i think it's it's a combination of both but at the same time i think you're in a different kind of microcosm because you have a job to do and i think most of the everybody who goes up in space right now is very aware of the job they do i would i'm i'm really happy to see jim i'm really happy to see bill and so i just have to say hello really quickly but we all have jobs to do so i think that that's one of those things that really focuses you it to the work that you do and so i think that those issues those divisions are not as pronounced because you have a common purpose and at the same time i think going back to what bill was saying about and a lot of people say about when they look back down they see the earth as a whole i think the thing for me was seeing this thin shimmering layer of blue light that's our atmosphere and that we know that that supports our life form and if we are foolish enough to really want to destroy what's a really thin layer of light that's a problem and i think that that is another perspective that you get it's not just the lines it's just the whole the totality makes a difference david harry also one of the yeah go ahead go ahead senator ali let me say that uh if if the space program brings people together like it does look at what's happening right now on the space station there is no official contact between the government of russia and the government of the united states except our space program to and from the international space station we always launch a russian cosmonaut on the dragon and we always have an american astronaut on the soys launched uh from kazakhstan and the the two crews have to operate the space station uh where do you see in politics that kind of cooperation between our two countries now with putin's aggression in ukraine well no it's a good it's a good point uh what are we looking at here we got is that that's just a glare or are we seeing something open on the uh on the on the module are we got a hatch open there the hatches it looks like the hatches open uh they've been tugging at something for a while it looks like they've tugged it open uh so it looks like the recovery crew has is making some physical contact with the the crew inside let's just look at that listen in for a second shift itself where i'm on just 3 000 yards away again plenty of people on the boat here glued to the side closest to where they can see all this action and again with just 3 000 yards separating us great views from the bow here you can see now that side hatch is open one of the navy personnel is about to get inside there in they go in total four will go into orion so it'll be a little bit of a tight squeeze but the goal is to have a recovery personnel with each astronaut assessing them all right it's helpful narration there the goal is to have one of the recovery personnel with each astronaut assessing them each of the helicopters once they come out of that they will two astronauts will go on each helicopter so it'll take two helicopters to get them there they'll be will be accompanied by one of these recovery professionals who are with them now who will make sure as uh as as jim was just saying that they're ambulatory that they can walk that they're okay as dr jemison was saying there are you know physical changes that you you undergo in the in the re-entry and in the uh in the mission so they just want to make sure that everybody's okay the initial evaluation is that they were all in good shape but but there's going to be some very specific testing and again i remind everybody that some of the testing is not just to say hey did you make the trip okay it's physical testing because that's part of what the mission is to find out a little bit more about how how the body reacts to certain things these these humans who are going to emerge from that craft will have been the farthest from earth of any humans ever ever they went the long way over around the far side of the moon and according to the the the the the dictates of the Artemis uh plans uh they're going to be missions like this every year uh they're going to be the next one's going to be a lunar landing uh they're going to be developing infrastructure they're already commercial space vehicles that are that are dropping equipment off uh so that they can start to build things on the moon uh so what you're watching here is not simply another test flight you're watching uh the next installment in the history of the u.s. space program been a great deal of tension over the decades between the united states and other powers about dominance in space some of that has shifted to a competition between uh governmental powers and corporate entities that have become sort of the the shuttles the the rockets that take stuff into space uh but what you are seeing today is a mission uh by nasa alongside other governments including corporate entities to send four humans three americans and a canadian around the moon the farthest distance that humans have ever traveled from earth back around through the atmosphere landing in a space module off the coast of san diego that is a space module that you are looking at right now there are four astronauts on that space module you are getting ready to uh to be removed from that module and we will hear a lot more from them and a lot more about the history and the future of space i want to thank my guests for this hour the former senator bill nelson uh dr may jemisin jim bagian bail dalton and david arioste thank you all for being with us in this historic moment that's it for all in uh for this week home to the rachel maddo show morning joe the briefing with jen sake and more voices you know and trust ms now is your source for news opinion and the world learn more at ms.now