SpaceX has successfully launched its Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), paving the way for the return of NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore after a prolonged stay in orbit.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 04:33 IST on Saturday, carrying the Crew Dragon capsule with four new astronauts on board.
Reaching orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the newest crew includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free.
“Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher," McClain said minutes into the flight.
Their arrival will mark the rotation of the station’s crew, facilitating the long-awaited return of Williams and her colleague.
Initially planned for an earlier launch, the mission faced delays due to technical issues and unfavourable weather conditions, including strong winds in the launch area.
Wilmore and Williams need SpaceX to get this relief team to the space station before they can check out. Arrival is set for late Saturday night.
NASA wants overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can fill in the newcomers on happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would put them on course for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting.
The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.
Also read: Sunita Williams set to depart ISS by March 19, says NASA
As test pilots for Boeing's new Starliner capsule, Wilmore and Williams were expected to be gone just a week or so when they were launched from Cape Canaveral on June 5 but remained stranded due to complications with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which was initially meant to bring them back to Earth.
A series of helium leaks and thruster failures marred their trip to the space station, setting off months of investigation by NASA and Boeing on how best to proceed.
Eventually ruling it unsafe, NASA ordered Starliner to fly back empty last September and moved Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight due back in February. Their return was further delayed when SpaceX's brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs before launching their replacements. To save a few weeks, SpaceX switched to a used capsule, moving up Wilmore and Williams' homecoming to mid-March.
Already capturing the world's attention, their unexpectedly long mission took a political twist when President Donald Trump and SpaceX's Elon Musk vowed earlier this year to accelerate the astronauts' return and blamed the former administration for stalling it.
Retired Navy captains who have lived at the space station before, Wilmore and Williams have repeatedly stressed that they support the decisions made by their NASA bosses since last summer. The two helped keep the station running — fixing a broken toilet, watering plants and conducting experiments — and even went out on a spacewalk together. With nine spacewalks, Williams set a new record for women: the most time spent spacewalking over a career.
A last-minute hydraulics issue delayed Wednesday's initial launch attempt. Concern arose over one of the two clamp arms on the Falcon rocket's support structure that needs to tilt away right before liftoff. SpaceX later flushed out the arm's hydraulics system, removing trapped air.
The duo's extended stay has been hardest, they said, on their families — Wilmore's wife and two daughters, and Williams' husband and mother. Besides reuniting with them, Wilmore, a church elder, is looking forward to getting back to face-to-face ministering and Williams can't wait to walk her two Labrador retrievers.
“We appreciate all the love and support from everybody,” Williams said in an interview earlier this week. “This mission has brought a little attention. There's goods and bads to that. But I think the good part is more and more people have been interested in what we're doing” with space exploration.
The Crew-9 team is set to depart the ISS no earlier than 19 March, pending favourable weather conditions for a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida.
Williams has been a key figure in space exploration, with two prior missions aboard the ISS. Her return, alongside the Crew-9 astronauts, marks the conclusion of an unexpectedly extended mission, reinforcing the critical role of commercial partnerships in modern spaceflight.
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