Astronauts answer questions after return to Earth

SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts engaged with media and answered questions Thursday during a virtual press conference in Houston after returning to Earth.

The four astronauts, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi safely returned from the International Space Station on Sunday, making the first U.S. crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.

The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3 a.m., ending the second astronaut flight for Elon Musk's company.

It was an express trip home, lasting just six and a half hours.

The astronauts, three American and one Japanese, flew back in the same capsule — named Resilience — in which they launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in November.

"The windows right there, so I glanced out of the window (during return on Dragon capsule) and, oh, my gosh, it it just took my breath away because right there in front of my face is the Milky Way," NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins said.

"I would say from my standpoint, it felt a little bit softer than landing on land and then having the rocking motion after you land in the water. I think we got very lucky with sea state. It could have been a lot more dramatic than it was. So, some subtle differences, but with a lot of similarities as well," NASA astronaut Shannon Walker said while comparing her experience of traveling on the Dragon capsule compared to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The 167-day mission was the longest for a crew capsule launching from the U.S.

The previous record of 84 days was set by NASA's final Skylab station astronauts in 1974.