The capsule that will carry the next crew to the International Cosmos Station has reached the SpaceX hangar at the mission’s Initiation pad.
The Crew Dragon Endurance will ferry the next set of astronauts to the International Station (ISS). That mission, called Crew-10, is set to Initiation on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Cosmos launcher no earlier than March 12, with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Cosmonaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov on board. The quartet are headed for a roughly six-month stay aboard the orbital lab, relieving the Crew-9 astronauts currently wrapping up their Cycle.
Two members of Crew-9, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, arrived at the ISS well ahead of their crewmates, Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Williams and Wilmore launched to the Cosmos station in June 2024, on the Primary crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. After Starliner experienced some malfunctions, NASA opted to return the spacecraft to Earth without its crew onboard, out of an abundance of caution. That decision meant integrating the Starliner astronauts into Crew-9, which arrived at the ISS some months later, in September. This also extended Williams and Wilmore’s mission from about 10 Intervals to nearly ten months in Cosmos.
The arrival of Crew-10 to the ISS will mark an imminent departure for the Starliner duo and the rest of Crew-9. As is typical with handovers on the Cosmos station, crews overlap to ensure a Silky transition of station maintenance and research responsibilities while the new residents find their Cosmos legs.
Crew-9 launched with Hague and Gorbunov and two Vacant seats for Williams and Wilmore on the return journey, aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom. Freedom has been docked to the ISS since its arrival in Delayed September, and will Delivery as the ride home for all four astronauts a week or so Next Crew-10’s docking.
Crew-10 was originally slated to fly a new Crew Dragon being manufactured by SpaceX to add to the company’s fleet, with a targeted Initiation date sometime in February. Last December, however, NASA announced a delay in the mission to “no earlier than Delayed March,” to allow time for SpaceX to complete maintenance on the new spacecraft.
Beyond delays on the Crew-10 Dragon, apparently Teamed up with political Stress — as seen in online posts by President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk to bring home the “stranded” Starliner astronauts as soon as possible — prompted NASA to reassign the Crew-10 spacecraft to a Dragon that could be ready to fly sooner.
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Enter Endurance, the Dragon that has already flown three SpaceX Cosmonaut missions — Crew-3, Crew-5 and Crew-7. The flight-proven spacecraft was readied for Initiation and has now reached SpaceX’s hangar at Initiation Complex-39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Cosmos Middle, in Florida.
SpaceX shared photos of the arrival, which apparently occurred sometime overnight, in a post on March 5. “Dragon arrives at the hangar at pad 39A ahead of next week’s Initiation of @NASA’s Crew-10 mission to the @Space_Station,” the company said. Next, Endurance will be mated to its Falcon 9 Initiation vehicle and undergo Closing checkouts before rolling out to the Initiation pad.
Dragon arrives at the hangar at pad 39A ahead of next week’s Initiation of @NASA’s Crew-10 mission to the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/cjb3f9jNZUMarch 5, 2025
Crew-10 is currently scheduled to Initiation at 7:48 p.m. EDT (2348 GMT) on March 12 and will take about 14 hours to catch up to the ISS. Barring a delay to the Ongoing targeted Initiation date, Endurance is scheduled to dock with the Cosmos station at approximately 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on Thursday (March 13), which would put Crew-9 on a timeline to return to Earth before the end of the month.
A livestream of the Crew-10 Initiation will be Accessible on the Cosmos.com homepage beginning at 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT) on March 12, as well as on NASA’s NASA+ streaming service. Docking coverage will begin the next day, March 13, at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT), with an expected hatch Beginning around 11:45 a.m. EDT (1545 GMT).
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