They are crew dragon
commander Michael Hopkins.
Hello there Sir, a pilot Victor Glover.
Good morning to you mission specialist
Shannon Walker. Good morning.
Thanks for joining us and Japan
Aerospace Exploration agency,
astronaut and mission specialists.
Soichi noguchi.
Good morning to you.
Thank you all for joining us.
I'm very excited to be talking to you.
The first thing I ever wanted to be when
I was a little boy was an astronaut.
Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough.
So you all are heroes to me.
I really look up to everything you do.
Let me start with Commander Hopkins.
I want to ask you the first question you
have completed the most spacewalks as a
matter of fact and anyone on the crew,
including three on this mission,
tell us a little bit about what that is like.
What were you,
what you were doing when you were
out there on the space walks?
Yeah, thanks Tony and and
on behalf of crew one.
Thank you for speaking with us this morning.
You know the spacewalks?
That's one of those very special
moments that you have in space
when you get to open the Hatch.
Look out at the Earth 250 miles
down below and and then go out
and get to work and so on.
On this particular mission,
we actually did five total throughout
the mission and and we were doing
a lot of upgrades to the station,
working on things like batteries
and solar arrays.
Upgrading those or so we can
extend the life of the other space
station and it all went very well.
Victor had four of those space walks as well,
so we had one of them and I
really can't say enough about how
well they all went and it was.
It was a lot of fun being able
to go out the door the first time
with Victor and just get to kind
of hear his response to to what
that experience was like.
Well, let's I I want to turn to Victor again.
Victor Glover, the pilot for the mission.
This was your very first space.
Flight, can you share your feelings when
you first experienced weightlessness,
give us a memorable moment of looking
out over the earth. All of that.
Absolutely good morning Tony and
you know the the opportunity to
get out of the seat and look out
of the window while we were still
in dragging after reaching orbit.
It's hard to describe seeing the earth
from 250 miles up for the first time.
It is just overwhelming.
It's so beautiful it it's amazing
to be able to see an entire body
of water or to see the horizon and
see that thin atmosphere that that
protects us and makes life the
earth comfortable for all of us.
It's hard to describe and I actually
took out my tablet and started recording.
The video just to try and capture,
not the video of Earth,
but just the the the overwhelming
emotional response that I had and
I tried to share that with folks
and it's still out there on the
Internet somewhere,
but it was just an amazing experience.
I just I can't even imagine.
I want to turn to Shannon Walker,
one of the mission specialists.
You supported experiments
ranging from combustion,
how worms move in space.
But I understand you're also
a volunteer test subject.
What does that mean and can you
tell us you know what you were?
What experiments were being done? Yeah,
so one of the one of the duties that
we have up there is to be a human
test subject to to understand how
the body reacts to being in space.
We know a lot of the major portions you know,
we know we're going to lose bone density,
but there's a lot of subtleties
that go on when you're in space,
and so the researchers are looking in
minute detail of of how the body is
reacting so we can send people to live in
space for much longer periods of time.
So let's see. It's hard to.
It's hard to say exactly,
but I know I gave a lot of blood
and a lot of urine.
That is being examined on the ground now.
OK, good, because in my head
I was envisioning there doing
things to you and you know but it,
but it sounds like it's
more like a medical thing.
And then they examine
everything afterwards. Space
does a lot to you.
Yeah, I could imagine astronaut
Taguchi let me turn to you.
You were the very first Japanese
astronaut to conduct a spacewalk.
Japan obviously supports a
lot of research on the ISS.
Can you share what excites
you most about a mission like
this and and share with us?
The work that Japan is doing in space. Well,
darling, thanks for having us.
It's a pleasure.
And of course international cooperation
is the key here on the ground.
Also in the space and look at this crew,
it's quite a diversified and
it's just show the sign of a
great international friendship.
And Japan has its own science module
as well as the resupply vehicle and we
are all for the United States program.
Going to the moon and forward.
That's great, I want to ask you a couple
of just really quick questions because
I've always been curious about some things.
I'll start with Commander Hopkins.
I want to ask you about the air
quality on the space station,
because you're not bringing in fresh air,
you can't do that.
It's constantly recirculated air.
I imagine it being kind of stale
and not great,
but tell us what it's like. Well,
I think that's probably a
pretty good description. There.
It is nice when you come back after 168
days and they open the Hatch and and you
get that breath of fresh air out there.
You know the in in microgravity like that.
It's not only just the the the air having to
be recirculated all the time, but you know,
humans are actually kind of messy.
There's a lot of dust,
there's a lot of other particles that are
floating around and and so fortunately
we have a great filtration system that.
That pulls a lot of that out.
That also means then that there's always
Saturdays is always a cleaning day up there.
But but in general it's it's not too bad.
I guess you get used to it and you don't
really notice it on a day to day basis,
and until you get back to Earth
and you open that hatch and and
you smell that fresh air
and that you you describing like Saturday
being cleaning day astronaut Glover,
let me ask you, does it?
You're in space. The view is amazing.
You're doing important stuff.
Does it become routine at some point
when you're up there that long? I
don't think it becomes routine.
You know every day you're up there is
special and sometimes it takes a little
effort to continue to make it special.
But you know Saturday cleaning.
For example. I enjoyed it.
I would write home and tell my kids
how much I was enjoying vacuuming
because I could ride the vacuum and
float around the space station.
I didn't have to climb up the wall
to get to the overhead the ceiling.
I could just float up there.
I felt like a kid from a Harry Potter movie.
It was great.
Shannon Walker. Uh, now regular
people are getting the opportunity.
They're mostly rich.
I have to say that.
To go up into space,
we have space tourism.
Any thoughts on that deal like that?
Do you think it's good for
other people to experience this?
I do, I do think it's good for
other people to experience it,
and I think it's good to help
foster the space economy.
'cause that's really what NASA wants.
We want to encourage commercialization
in space to be able to get more people.
More companies,
more activities happening in space.
So I think it's awesome.
All right? Well, congratulations to
all of you on a successful mission.
Thank you very much for
joining us this morning.
It's quite the thrill and best wishes
to all of you, thanks. Thanks,
thanks, honey, thank you.