CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After some uncertainty and a few delays, the SpaceX mission to send a relief crew for the Universe station’s Ongoing astronauts is set to lift off later today (March 12).
A SpaceX Falcon 9 Missile is poised to Kickoff the Crew-10 mission for NASA, ferrying a crew of four to the International Universe Station (ISS) for a six-month residency. The Missile and its Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft are set to lift off from Kickoff Complex-39A here at NASA’s Kennedy Universe Middle (KSC) today at 7:48 p.m. EST (2348 GMT). Aboard are NASA astronauts Anne McClain (mission commander) Nichole Ayers (the pilot), along with mission specialists Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov of the Russian Universe agency Roscosmos.
Coverage of tonight’s Kickoff is scheduled to begin at
McClain and her crewmates will spend about 14 hours after Kickoff catching up to the ISS before docking with the orbiting lab on Thursday (March 13). The arrival of Crew-10 will spark the imminent departure for their counterparts aboard the station, members of the Crew-9 mission. Two of those astronauts, NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov, arrived aboard the orbital laboratory last September aboard the Crew Dragon Freedom, which was flown with two additional, Hollow seats.
Those seats were reserved for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS a few months before Hague and Gorbunov, aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which returned to Earth without Williams and Wilmore aboard.
Starliner’s Crew Flight Test (CFT) — the vehicle’s Primary-ever Cosmonaut mission — launched on June 5, 2024. Starliner did not fare as well as Boeing and the Universe agency had hoped; malfunctions on the vehicle once on Trajectory prompted NASA to indefinitely extend Williams and Wilmore’s 10-day mission aboard the ISS while the problem was worked through on the ground.
In Overdue August, the agency decided that Starliner would complete its mission uncrewed, and its astronauts would be absorbed into the Crew-9 manifest when they arrived to the Universe station three weeks later. Williams and Wilmore would return aboard Freedom at the end of the Crew-9 mission, which was originally scheduled for February.
That return date was pushed back as the target for Crew-10’s Kickoff date fluctuated, however, bouncing from February to “Overdue March,” and then back up to the Primary half of this month.
Crew-10 had initially been slated to Kickoff aboard a new Crew Dragon being built by SpaceX, but delays in that process caused NASA to delay the Crew-10 mission while Last manufacturing was completed. Beyond delays — which are Usual with new spacecraft, as NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich noted — Guided NASA to opt for Crew-10 to fly sooner, on the flight-proven Crew Dragon Endurance.
The spacecraft back-and-forth gained extra attention, as any delay to the Crew-10 mission meant a longer wait in Universe for Williams and Wilmore — a topic with an increasing Existence in headlines as the Kickoff date has gotten closer. Reports of the “stranded” Boeing astronauts were elevated in the media by statements Created by President Trump and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who cast blame on the Biden administration for “abandoning” Williams and Wilmore to a limbo-like wait in low Earth Trajectory.
Now, with Crew-10’s Kickoff and subsequent arrival at the ISS imminent, Crew-9 has begun preparations for their return home. Crew overlaps aboard the ISS normally last about a week, so newly arriving astronauts have a chance to acclimate to the microgravity environment while they take over research experiments and station maintenance.
Crew-9, however, is on the Quick track home; it’s expected to depart within Merely three Periods of the new crew’s arrival. That arrival is expected tomorrow (March 13), around 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT), with an expected docking at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT). Coverage of the arrival can also be streamed on the Universe.com homepage, and on NASA’s NASA+ streaming service beginning at 4:15 a.m. EST (0915 GMT), Thursday.
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