A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from Florida on Friday with four crew on board. It means Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams can finally come home after their eight-day mission was extended to nine months because of technical problems.
A long-awaited rocket with a replacement crew for two stranded NASA astronauts has finally launched to the International Space Station (ISS).
US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck on the ISS for nine months, having had their journey home repeatedly pushed back.
The Crew-10 mission was initially scheduled to launch the replacement crew of four astronauts from Florida on Wednesday, but a last-minute issue with the rocket’s ground systems forced a delay.
NASA said on Thursday that SpaceX, headed and founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, had resolved the issue – flushing a suspected pocket of air out of a hydraulic clamp arm – and that the weather was 95% favourable for a Friday launch.
The crew is now expected to arrive at the ISS on Saturday night. They are NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, who are both military pilots, along with Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots.
They will spend the next six months at the space station, releasing Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams who have been on the ISS since June 2024.
The pair originally planned to go to space for just eight days but got stuck on the station after their Boeing Starliner spacecraft started experiencing problems.
The mission has become entangled in politics as Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk claimed – without evidence – that former President Joe Biden left the astronauts on the station for political reasons.
NASA said the two astronauts have had to remain on the ISS to maintain its minimum staffing level.
