CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Liftoff! Four astronauts are flying toward the International Space Station (ISS) to relieve crew members who have been waiting for a ride home since last summer.
SpaceX launched the Crew Dragon capsule Endurance on a Falcon 9 rocket this evening (March 14) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) here on Florida’s Space Coast. The mission, called Crew-10, lifted off from KSC’s Launch Complex-39A at 7:03 p.m. EDT (2303 GMT), carrying mission commander Anne McClain and mission pilot Nichole Ayers, both of NASA, and mission specialists Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The quartet are headed for a six-month rotation aboard the ISS and will be relieving their Crew-9 counterparts, two of whom have been aboard the orbital laboratory for an unexpectedly long stay that began last June, with the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft.
Crew-10 was originally supposed to launch on Wednesday (March 12), but a hydraulics issue with ground equipment scuttled that try. The mission launched about half an hour before sunset today, the fire from the mission’s Falcon 9 casting a golden-hour glow over Florida’s Space Coast.
Ascending into the clear sky, the rocket’s engines shut off about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, followed by stage separation and a boost-back burn by the vehicle’s first stage, which maneuvered itself for a touchdown on SpaceX’s Landing Zone-1 at Cape Canaveral approximately five minutes later.
The Falcon 9 second stage rocketed onward for another 7.5 minutes following first-stage separation, releasing Endurance and her crew into low Earth orbit on a trajectory to catch up to the ISS within about 28 hours.
“Thank you to all of the teams from across the world who contributed to the launch today,” McClain said shortly after the picture-perfect spacecraft separation.
“Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher,” she added. “Days like today are made possible only when people choose the harder right over the easier wrong, build relationships, choose cooperation and believe in the inherent goodness of all people across the world. My family and friends, without you, I would not be here. Explore boldly, live gratefully, and go Crew-10!”
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Crew-10’s arrival at the ISS late Saturday night (March 15) will mark a significant milestone in the preparations already underway to return some of the station’s current residents as soon as possible.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft last June. The duo were flying the capsule’s first crewed flight test, which was expected to stay in orbit for about 10 days before flying the pair back to Earth.
Issues with Starliner, however, prompted NASA to return the spacecraft uncrewed last September, after over two months of ground tests failed to instill in the space agency a complete confidence in the vehicle to return their astronauts safely. Wilmore and Williams stayed aboard the ISS to await their new ride home.
That ride — SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Freedom — arrived in late September, a few weeks after Starliner’s departure. Freedom launched on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission with only two of the original four astronauts aboard the spacecraft: NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
NASA took the other two crewmembers off Crew-9 to leave seats for Wilmore and Williams during the spacecraft’s return journey, at the end of the Crew-9 rotation. Wilmore and Williams became part of the Crew-9 and ISS Expedition 72 crew after Freedom arrived and assumed typical research and maintenance duties alongside the station’s other long-term residents.
“When we looked at the situation at the time, we had a Crew-9 launch in front of us. It made sense to take the opportunity to bring Crew-9 up with just two seats and have Butch and Suni fill in, and do the rest of the long-duration mission,” ISS program manager Dana Weigel explained during a flight readiness review (FRR) press briefing last Friday (March 7).
Related: ‘We just ran out of time’: Boeing Starliner astronauts on why their spaceship returned to Earth without them
A new Crew Dragon being built by SpaceX had been tapped to fly on Crew-10 but, facing delays in its manufacture, NASA announced a move of the mission’s launch from February to “late March”. What transpired in the weeks following, however, ultimately caused NASA to swap Crew-10’s new Dragon for a flight-proven one, Endurance, in order that Crew-9 could return sooner rather than later.
Reports describing the Starliner astronauts as “stranded” had been circulating in the media from relatively early in their mission. But that rhetoric ramped up after President Trump’s inauguration, when he and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk both repeatedly claimed that the Biden administration had “abandoned” Williams and Wilmore in space. Musk also said that he offered the previous administration a separate Crew Dragon launch specifically to “rescue” the Starliner pair but this offer was declined.
NASA announced the spacecraft swap for Crew-10 in the wake of these statements by President Trump and Musk, fueling speculation that the move was politically, rather than logistically, motivated. But NASA officials have stressed that conversations about the need to possibly switch the mission’s spacecraft began well before the issue became a political one.
It’s “very typical” for new spacecraft to experience delays during the manufacturing process, NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said during last week’s FRR call.
“We’re always looking and refining the manifest,” he said. “We started looking at that schedule, and at that time early this year, late January. That’s when we finally decided we’ll move to [Endurance].”
To facilitate a smooth handover of responsibilities and ensure the space station remains continuously occupied, crew arrivals and departures from the ISS overlap by about a week, as new astronauts acclimate to their new microgravity environment. Crew-9 had initially been slated to return in February, but a postponement in Crew-10’s launch pushed the departure date down the road. So, to speed up the turnover, NASA has shorted the crew overlap to just three days.
In preparation for her departure, Williams, the commander of the current Expedition 72, passed the title to cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin in a change of command ceremony held aboard the ISS last week. Upon the arrival of Crew-10, that title will pass to Onishi, who will maintain the role during his six-month stint.
This is the second time in space for both Onishi and McClain. Onishi first served as a member of ISS Expeditions 48 and 49, after he launched to the station aboard a Soyuz rocket in 2016, and McClain on Expeditions 58 and 59 in 2019. This is the first time in space for both Ayers and Peskov. Their mission during their half-year aboard the orbital lab will focus on microgravity research and its effects on the human body, as well as routine station maintenance.
Crew-10 is on course to rendezvous with the ISS on Saturday, with an expected docking around 11:30 p.m. EDT (0330 GMT on March 16) and hatch opening at about 1:05 a.m. EDT (0505 GMT) on Sunday (March 16). Coverage of the arrival is scheduled to begin at 9:45 p.m. EDT (0145 GMT) on Saturday and can be watched on NASA’s NASA+ streaming service. Space.com will carry NASA’s feed if the agency makes it available.
Crew-9’s Dragon Freedom is expected to depart the station a few days from now, returning Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov to Earth under Freedom’s parachutes, for a splashdown somewhere off the coast of Florida some hours following their undocking.