NASA and SpaceX successfully launched a long-awaited crewed mission on Friday to bring US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore back from the International Space Station (ISS), where they had been stranded for nine months.
A Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Crew Dragon capsule, took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03 pm local time, with a four-member crew heading to the ISS. The astronauts aboard are NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. They are part of the Crew-10 mission, set to replace Williams, Wilmore, and two others.
The spacecraft is expected to dock with the ISS on March 15, after which the crew will spend a few days adjusting before taking over operations from Crew-9, who will then depart no earlier than March 19.
Originally scheduled for March 12, the mission was delayed due to a last-minute issue with the rocket’s ground systems. NASA later confirmed that SpaceX had fixed the problem by removing an air pocket from a hydraulic clamp arm, and with 95% favorable weather, the launch was rescheduled for March 15.
Williams and Wilmore had been stuck in space since their trip aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. What was meant to be an eight-day mission was extended due to technical issues with the Starliner, which eventually returned empty. The mission also became politically charged, with US President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk accusing former President Joe Biden of leaving the astronauts on the station for political reasons.
