WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA and SpaceX on Friday launched a long-awaited crew to the International Space Station that will let them bring home U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck on the orbital lab for nine months.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 7:03 p.m. ET (2303 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying four astronauts who will replace Wilmore and Williams, both of whom are veteran NASA astronauts and retired U.S. Navy test pilots and were the first to fly Boeing’s Starliner capsule to the ISS in June.
But problems with Starliner’s propulsion system during the flight forced an extension of their planned eight-day stay as NASA deemed it too risky for them to fly home on the craft, which returned to Earth empty in September.
Otherwise a routine crew rotation flight, Friday’s Crew-10 mission is also a long-awaited key step to bring the astronaut duo back to Earth. They are scheduled to depart the station on March 19 after the Crew-10 astronauts arrive Saturday night.
The mission has become entangled in politics as President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, who is also SpaceX’s CEO, say without evidence that former President Joe Biden left the astronauts on the station for political reasons.
“We came prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,” Wilmore said, adding that he did not believe NASA’s decision to keep them on the ISS until Crew-10’s arrival had been affected by politics.
“That’s what your nation’s human spaceflight program’s all about,” he said, “planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that.”
NASA says the two astronauts have had to remain on the ISS to maintain its minimum staffing level.
Having seen their mission turn into a normal NASA rotation to the ISS, Wilmore and Williams have been doing scientific research and conducting routine maintenance with the other astronauts.
“UNUSUAL” FLIGHT PREPARATION PROCESS
Trump and Musk’s demand for an earlier return was an unusual intervention, and NASA brought forward the Crew-10 mission from March 26, swapping a delayed SpaceX capsule for one that would be ready sooner.
The pressure from Musk and Trump has hung over a NASA preparation and safety process that normally follows a well-defined course.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, Steve Stich, said SpaceX’s “rapid pace of operations” had required NASA to change some of the ways it verifies flight safety.
The agency had to address some “late-breaking” issues, NASA space operations chief Ken Bowersox told reporters, including investigating a fuel leak on a recent SpaceX Falcon 9 launch and deterioration of a coating on some of the Dragon crew capsule’s thrusters.
Bowersox said it was hard for NASA to keep up with SpaceX: “We’re not quite as agile as they are, but we’re working well together.”
When the new crew arrives aboard the station, Wilmore, Williams and two others – NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov – can return to Earth in a capsule that has been attached to the station since September, as part of the prior Crew-9 mission.
If Crew-10 launches as planned on Friday, it will dock to the ISS at 11:30 p.m. ET Saturday (0330 GMT Sunday), followed by a traditional handover ceremony that will allow for the Crew-9 crew’s departure on March 19.
(This story has been refiled to correct the GMT time conversion in paragraph 2)
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Kevin Liffey and Leslie Adler)
