ABC News June 9, 2020

NASA astronauts reflect on 1st private space launch

WATCH: NASA astronauts reflect on 1st private space launch

It has been a little over a week since SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board. It was the first crewed launch to depart from American soil in nearly a decade.

ABC News' Transportation Correspondent Gio Benitez caught up with the NASA veterans from the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday.

MORE: Meet Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, the history-making NASA and SpaceX astronauts

"It's going pretty well. We've been very busy," Hurley said, joking that they are still trying to get their "space legs."

David J. Phillip/AP
A SpaceX Falcon 9, with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in the Dragon crew capsule, lifts off from Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 30, 2020.

The mission marked the first time a private company -- Elon Musk's SpaceX -- successfully sent humans into orbit.

"We probably got to the launch pad a little faster potentially than maybe a government organization would have done it," Hurley said, but emphasized it was the combination of both SpaceX and NASA that made the historic launch possible.

MORE: Dragon docks at International Space Station 19 hours after NASA-SpaceX launch

The astronauts said the simulations SpaceX and NASA put together matched a majority of what their experience felt like during the 19-hour journey to the ISS.

"The one thing that was different is you just can't simulate what it feels like to ride on a rocket into orbit," Hurley explained. "The vibrations, the coming alive of the engines... all those noises and feelings and rumblings."

MORE: Dragon soars in successful NASA-SpaceX launch

Both men are fathers and believe that one of their biggest contributions can be to inspire children to get into the science and technology fields.

Throughout the interview Behnken made sure the third unofficial member of the Demo-2 crew, their sons' sequin stuffed dinosaur named Tremor, was visible.

NASA
ABC News' transportation correspondent Gio Benitez caught up with NASA veterans Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley from the International Space Station on June 8, 2020.

"Both of our sons were just super excited to see the toy that they had selected go on the mission with us," Behnken said. "I think in both of our cases our children were not old enough to really understand our history of flying on space shuttles, and my son wasn't even born during my last mission and so to get this chance to share it with our children is really exciting."

Behnken and Hurley are both married to fellow NASA astronauts.

Joe Skipper/Reuters
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken greet their families before the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 27, 2020.

"We know that the job that they have right now is much more difficult than the job we have," Hurley said. "And what we are doing up here keeps us pretty busy and is pretty difficult, but there's no comparison."

ABC News' Sam Sweeney and Amanda Maile contributed to this report.