A crew of astronauts who will take over duties on the International Space Station from NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore allowing the duo to return home after a days-long journey turned into a nine-month, politically charged trip have arrived at the orbiting laboratory.
The Crew-10 mission, part of a routine staff rotation jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX, took off at 7:03 p.m. ET Friday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule, riding atop one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets, carried the four Crew-10 astronauts — NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — to orbit.
The four crew members docked with the space station around 12:04 a.m. ET on Sunday. They will spend a few days in a “handover” period with Williams, Wilmore, and their fellow Crew-9 astronauts, NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The Crew-9 Dragon capsule has been docked at the space station since September. If all goes according to plan, Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov will climb aboard the Crew-9 spacecraft and head back to Earth as soon as March 19.
NASA had slated Williams, Wilmore and the other Crew-9 astronauts to return as soon as Sunday. However, their departure hinges on the safe arrival of the relief crew and SpaceX called off an attempt to launch the Crew-10 mission on Wednesday due to issues with the company’s launchpad ground systems.
The new date is closer in line to a late March departure time that NASA gave the astronauts in December before SpaceX opted to swap the Dragon capsule it used to fly Crew-10 in an attempt to accelerate Williams and Wilmore’s return.
Launch attempts are routinely called off because of technical issues, but the slight delay in getting Crew-10 off the ground has reignited conversations of Williams and Wilmore being “stuck” or “stranded” in space descriptors the two astronauts have rejected.
Launch attempts are routinely called off because of technical issues, but the slight delay in getting Crew-10 off the ground has reignited conversations of Williams and Wilmore being “stuck” or “stranded” in space descriptors the two astronauts have rejected.
“That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck and I get it, we both get it,” Wilmore told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in February. “Help us change the narrative, let’s change it to: prepared and committed despite what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”
After the hand-off of duties to Crew-10 astronauts is complete, the Crew-9 astronauts can board their capsule and undock and that milestone will kick off the final stretch of Williams and Wilmore’s fraught journey.
While their stay in space has become increasingly politicized, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump asserting the Biden administration abandoned the duo in space, Williams and Wilmore have known since at least last summer they would return home with Crew-9 as part of a routine staffing rotation.
Acting NASA administrator Janet Petro said during Friday’s launch webcast that she spoke to Williams and Wilmore and their crewmates last week.
She said they suspect the four astronauts will have “mixed emotions.”
“Every time you get to go to space — which is what all astronauts want to do — you never know it might be your last time, because you might not be selected for another mission,” Petro said. “So I bet they have mixed emotions leaving their colleagues up there at the space station. I’m sure they’re anxious to get home and put their feet on Earth and spend time with their family — but I think that they have enjoyed their time in space.”
