And Mission Control Rejoiced

"Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars."

"Roger, Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again."

— NASA Mission Control, right after Neil Armstrong's "The Eagle has landed."

Mission Control has a situation. Everyone is looking intently at The Big Board, waiting for disaster to strike. But then, the hero(es) arrive(s) to save the day! Mission Control explodes in cheering after sitting in suspense. ("He/She/They did it!") May include ecstatic crying, sudden hugging and a resolution to earlier conflicts in Mission Control.

Usually used to show that the hero/heroine is able to solve situations that no one thought could be solved any more. A savvy viewer may not get out of his chair so quickly, as this trope is also commonly used just before an Oh, Crap! moment for Mood Whiplash.

Subtrope of Mission Control. Contrast Missing Mission Control.

Unrelated to And There Was Much Rejoicing.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: When battleship Libra is falling to earth, all the characters come to destroy it before the impact. Heero arrives but is without his most powerful weapon because he lost it in a recent battle. All of a sudden Wufei finds it and brings it to him and informs mission control. "I've given Heero his Buster Rifle!" Mission Control erupts in cheers—and he hasn't even used it yet.
• Frequently seen in GaoGaiGar to the point where there's a slight bit of stock footage used for it.

Fan Works

• Advice and Trust: In chapter 7 Zeruel has ignored or blasted into oblivion all defenses surrounding Tokyo-3, has easily maimed Unit 00 and 02, has smashed Unit 01, has invaded the Geofront and nothing Nerv throws at it works. Right when it is about to blast everybody Shinji and Asuka come along riding Unit 03. Everyone in The Bridge cheered.
  "YES! WAY TO GO, KIDS!" Misato shouted in joy.
  The mood on Central Dogma's command deck had suddenly swung from mounting despair to shouts of relief and cheer. Shinji and Asuka, the Pilots who'd won victory after victory had appeared once again to save the day.
• Last Child of Krypton: Misato starts cheering alongside the bridge crew after Superman a.k.a., Shinji manages to quickly resolve the Jet Alone incident.
• Once More with Feeling: In chapter 17, when Asuka kills Sandalphon and Rei manages to pull her out of the volcano, the whole command center celebrated the pilots' victory and survival.
  "Shinji" a voice called out from above, and he turned, glancing at the highest tier in the command center as the raucous celebrations continued unabated at the certain loss of two Evangelion's and their pilots turned around in less than a minute to the recovery of both alive

Films — Live-Action

• The Situation Room at the end of Air Force One, sparked by a C-130's announcement of the successful rescue of the president from the stricken Air Force One.
  Pilot: Liberty 2-4 is changing callsigns. Liberty 2-4 is now Air Force One!
• Happens in Argo when Tony Mendez and the six American hostages successfully clear Iranian airspace.
• Happens in Armageddon (1998) after Harry Stamper's team defeats the asteroid — with one notable exception.
• Happens at the end of Apollo 13, when the crew responds after entering the atmosphere. In the real event, they didn't because they knew they weren't out of the woods yet: The capsule still had to splash down.
• In The Cabin in the Woods, the control room staff celebrate and break out the champagne when the ritual finally seems to have succeeded in pleasing the Elder Gods for another year.
• Everest: In the trailer there's a scene where they announce they've made it to the summit to cheering back at base camp. Proves to be premature as the blizzard moves in not long after.
• Independence Day. After Russell Casse flies his jet into the alien ship's primary weapon and destroys it, the mission control personnel in Area 51 start cheering.

• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man, after Tony saves the fighter pilot by punching his parachute.
  • In The Avengers, the controllers on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier cheer when Tony Stark captures the nuke bound for New York and instead sends it through the portal.
• In Pacific Rim, the Shatterdome staff celebrate mankind's victory by stopping the war clock that counted down the time until the next Kaiju attack.
• Just as it appear the time portal has closed at the end of Rewind (2013), mission control is shocked to see it sputter back online for just long enough that Lyndsay, Danny, and Shaun can return from 1929. The historians, technicians, and even the military personnel rush down to the portal room to welcome the trio back from their time traveling adventures, with much congratulatory back-slapping and relieved hugging to go around. There's even a party to celebrate the mission's success!
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: After the whale probe stops destroying Earth and returns to where it came from.
• Star Wars:
  • After the destruction of the original Death Star in A New Hope and the new one in Return of the Jedi.
  • In The Last Jedi, the bridge of the Raddus does this after the Dreadnought is taken down.
• Tomorrow Never Dies: MI6 breaks out into relieved laughter and cheers as Bond escapes the blast zone of an ill-advised missile strike in a fighter jet packing enough nukes to spread fallout over Eastern Europe.
• In WarGames, when David Lightman manages to convince the JOSHUA AI inhabiting the W.O.P.R. computer to not launch all of the U.S.'s missiles at the Soviet Union and start World War III, the NORAD command staff begins to cheer.
• In Without Warning (1994), Mission Control celebrates as meteors headed for Washington, Moscow, and Beijing are destroyed. Cue a rather silent Mass "Oh, Crap!" moments later, when hundreds of new meteors are detected hurtling down, dooming all life on Earth.
• In Hidden Figures, when John Glenn successfully splashes down.

Literature

• The Martian:
  • Everyone cheers as Pathfinder's signal arrives, letting them know Mark successfully revived it. In this case, "Mission Control" is a conference room crowded with people and computers, because the old Pathfinder mission center has long since been repurposed.
  • Again at the end, when Lewis reports, "Houston, this is Hermes Actual. Six crew safely aboard."

Live-Action TV

• Stargate SG-1:
  • Stargate Command has erupted in cheers on quite a few occasions. But then, on quite a few occasions, the Earth has come this close to ending.
  • In the episode "Tangent" Teal'c and Jack are trapped in a modified death glider on a ballistic course out of the solar system. After Sam, Daniel, and Jacob Carter get there and beam them off, the SGC control room erupts in cheers upon receiving their radio message.
• In 24, CTU headquarters usually doesn't cheer, but there is a notable sense of relief when the day's threat has been neutralized.
• In the Castle episode "Still", Beckett is trapped on a pressure-plate triggered bomb that's set to go off in thirty minutes or if she steps off the pressure plate, whichever comes first. At the end of the episode when they manage to disarm the bomb and Castle informs Esposito and Ryan that Beckett is safe, everyone in the precinct starts cheering and hugging each other.
• From the Earth to the Moon has numerous examples of this. Since almost every mission is the first time they've done something with a human being sitting at the top of the rocket, there's a lot of pressure and immense relief when it goes right. Notable examples include Alan Shepard's flight in Mercury 7 and the landing of Apollo 11... and then there's Apollo 15, where the lunar geologists rejoice over the astronauts finding the anorthite that would be dubbed the Genesis Rock.
• Wonder Woman (1975): In "Flight to Oblivion", Wonder Woman breaks into mission control, disarms the mook and allows the operators to divert the missile into the sea. And there was much rejoicing in the mission control room!
  Wonder Woman: Good work, Captain!
  Captain: Look who's talking!
• In For All Mankind, there are several such moments (not surprising given the subject material) some of them immediately subverted by things going horribly wrong (or people realizing the success was only partial and the real work is yet to be done) but some of them remain pure joy.

Video Games

• In Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies' eponymous mission, the ground crew for the satellite launch can be heard cheering in the background when the one on the radio announces the rocket has reached an altitude too high for any enemies to stop it.
• In Final Fantasy VIII, the technicians are surprised to hear transmissions coming from the long-defunct spaceship that Squall and Rinoa are sheltering in, and do everything in their power to help the kids get back to earth. Unfortunately, they are significantly less enthused when Squall tells them that Rinoa is a sorceress, and immediately stop referring to her by name.
• At the climax of Mass Effect 3, Admiral Hackett indulges in the most deadpan version imaginable when Shepard reaches their objective despite the Reapers incinerating the rest of the convoy in mid-charge.
  Hackett: Holy shit. S/he did it.
• In Ninja Gaiden 3, everyone in the control room cheers after Ryu succeeds in jumping between two planes so that he can get in time to the Black Narwhal (the aircraft carrier used by the villains).
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, when you shoot down your first UFO and complete other significant feats, such as beating the Final Dungeon, the game will cut back to Mission Control for a Cut Scene where your Number Two and fellow green-shirted nameless technicians are cheering.
  • The game also subverts this after you raid the aliens' hidden Earth staging post, take out its commander, and bring back an odd communications device. Everyone in Mission Control is celebrating except for your chief scientists, who asks the obvious question: "If the Sectoid Commander was the alien leader, then who, or what, was it communicating with?" Sure enough, The War Has Just Begun, and the aliens' actual leader caste begins appearing during subsequent missions, along with their elite forces. And with the Enemy Within expansion, less than a month after you attack their base, the aliens retaliate by attacking XCOM HQ.

Western Animation

• Family Guy: The Griffin family accidentally launch themselves in the space shuttle. After they successfully land, mission control erupts in cheers except one guy, saying he doesn't even know them.
• In the Pinky and the Brain episode "Fly," NASA's mission control cheers for their successful launch (with confetti), but it's cut short when one of the crankier members tells them all to "can it" and they immediately do.
• Beany and Cecil: in "The Courtship of Cecilia" (from the 1988 reboot), Cecil blasts off into space after drinking a glass of lemonade spiked with hot sauce. A shot of Mission Control celebrating is shown after Cecil successfully separated.

Real Life

• Very definitely Truth in Television. Even if there are no astronauts' lives on the line, many space missions have that moment where billions of dollars and years of work could go up in smoke in an instant. It's quite a relief when it doesn't.
  • Mars rover Curiosity's successful landing and the subsequent celebration at NASA (pictured above) is the iconic real life example from The New '10s.
    • 9 years later, the one for the Perseverance rover's touchdown was tempered by social-distancing measures in place to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic, but the jubilation was still plain to see.
  • The New Horizons Pluto flyover had one of these. There was no landing, but some dramatic tension for a few hours because the spacecraft couldn't waste time communicating with Earth during its very brief visit to Pluto. It took ten years to get there, and there was some uncertainty that every part of it would still work properly, but it did.
  • As well as the Rosetta/Philae comet landing.
  • Everyone in the control room during the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket's first-stage landing. It's like one of the MLG parody videos, except the hype is real here.
  • The DART mission had another example, though it was an unusual one, because the rejoicing came when the spacecraft successfully slammed into the tiny asteroid it was sent to at 14,000 mph, utterly obliterating it. The mission's purpose was to see if it was feasible to target an asteroid with a kinetic impactor to alter its trajectory, just in case one ever posed a danger to Earth.

---