SpaceX launches crew to International Space station to replace stuck NASA astronauts

The Associated Press

· Posted: Mar 14, 2025 8:10 PM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

The replacements for NASA's 2 stuck astronauts launched to the International Space Station connected Friday night, paving the mode for the pair's instrumentality aft 9 agelong months.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams request SpaceX to get this alleviation squad to the abstraction presumption earlier they tin cheque out. Arrival is acceptable for precocious Saturday night.

NASA wants overlap betwixt the 2 crews truthful Wilmore and Williams tin capable successful the newcomers connected happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would enactment them connected people for an undocking adjacent week and a splashdown disconnected the Florida coast, upwind permitting.

The duo volition beryllium escorted backmost by astronauts who flew up connected a rescue ngo connected SpaceX past September alongside 2 bare seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams connected the instrumentality leg.

Reaching orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the newest unit includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, some subject pilots; and Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, some erstwhile hose pilots. They volition walk the adjacent six months astatine the abstraction station, considered the mean stint, aft springing Wilmore and Williams free.

"Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher," McClain said minutes into the flight.

2 astronauts were meant to beryllium gone for conscionable a week

As trial pilots for Boeing's caller Starliner capsule, Wilmore and Williams expected to beryllium gone conscionable a week oregon truthful erstwhile they launched from Cape Canaveral connected June 5. A bid of helium leaks and thruster failures marred their travel to the abstraction station, mounting disconnected months of probe by NASA and Boeing connected however champion to proceed.

Eventually ruling it unsafe, NASA ordered Starliner to alert backmost bare past September and moved Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX formation owed backmost successful February. Their instrumentality was further delayed erstwhile SpaceX's marque caller capsule needed extended artillery repairs earlier launching their replacements. To prevention a fewer weeks, SpaceX switched to a utilized capsule, moving up Wilmore and Williams' homecoming to mid-March.

Mission takes a governmental turn

Already capturing the world's attention, their unexpectedly agelong ngo took a governmental twist erstwhile U.S. President Donald Trump and SpaceX's Elon Musk vowed earlier this twelvemonth to accelerate the astronauts' instrumentality and blamed the erstwhile medication for stalling it.

Retired Navy captains who person lived astatine the abstraction presumption before, Wilmore and Williams person repeatedly stressed that they enactment the decisions made by their NASA bosses since past summer. The 2 helped support the presumption moving — fixing a breached toilet, watering plants and conducting experiments — and adjacent went retired connected a spacewalk together. With 9 spacewalks, Williams acceptable a caller grounds for women: the astir clip spent spacewalking implicit a career.

A last-minute hydraulics contented delayed Wednesday's archetypal motorboat attempt. Concern arose implicit 1 of the 2 clamp arms connected the Falcon rocket's enactment operation that needs to tilt distant close earlier liftoff. SpaceX aboriginal flushed retired the arm's hydraulics system, removing trapped air.

The duo's extended enactment has been hardest, they said, connected their families — Wilmore's woman and 2 daughters, and Williams' hubby and mother. Besides reuniting with them, Wilmore, a religion elder, is looking guardant to getting backmost to face-to-face ministering and Williams can't hold to locomotion her 2 Labrador retrievers.

"We admit each the emotion and enactment from everybody," Williams said successful an interrogation earlier this week. "This ngo has brought a small attention. There's goods and bads to that. But I deliberation the bully portion is much and much radical person been funny successful what we're doing" with abstraction exploration.