HOUSTON — We’re hearing more from the astronauts who returned to Houston after their history-making SpaceX mission.
And a retired astronaut is also giving us his thoughts.
Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley capped off their journey to the International Space Station with an old-fashioned splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.
It was the first such splashdown for NASA in 45 years.
“We felt the splash, and we saw it splash up over the window, it was a great relief for both of us at that point," Behnken said.
But as rescue boats sped to recover the astronauts, spectators in their own boats started closing in, against U.S. Coast Guard restrictions.
"We can certainly appreciate the folks wanting to participate in the event, but there are some safety aspects that, I think, as the administrator said, we'll have to take a look at because it just can't happen like it did before," Hurley said.
As they waited in the capsule floating in the water, they decided to try out their phone.
“You know, ‘Hi, this is Bob and Doug, we're in the ocean,’ and we also called our wives, I think they were together here at Mission Control," Hurley said.
But in the old days, splashdowns included no fancy way to phone home.
Walt Cunningham splashed down in the Atlantic back in 1968 in the Apollo 7 mission.
In that return, the crew had to turn the capsule right side up, before opening the hatch.
“I was worried I was gonna throw up down there, but we got it on, and everything worked fine," Cunningham said.
This past weekend, the 88-year-old cheered on the SpaceX splashdown, and he knows, its success was made possible through the work of previous generations of scientists and astronauts.
"People today have no idea how much effort it took to fly the first Apollo spacecraft," Cunningham said.
The space pioneer says just he's proud to see the United States, and Houston, get back in the space game.