NASA and SpaceX have launched the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) successfully to recover astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, stranded for more than nine months after Starliner capsule problems. Crew-10’s Dragon spacecraft arrived at the ISS at 12:04 am ET (9:34 am IST) on March 16, greeted with an orbital sunrise and a welcome from Crew-9 astronauts, including Williams and Wilmore.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carried four Crew-10 NASA astronauts from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, NASA’s Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, and JAXA’s Takuya Onishi. The hatch on the station swung open at 1:35 am ET (11:05 am IST) and the newcomers were greeted onboard with hugs by the Expedition 72 crew members. The newcomers will spend several days with Williams and Wilmore to get them accustomed to the station.
Williams and Wilmore, whose mission was initially planned for eight days, will come back to Earth on Wednesday at 4 am ET (1:30 pm IST) along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard a Dragon vehicle. Their stay was prolonged because of a malfunction in the thruster of the Boeing Starliner, which raised health issues such as weight loss that could be seen in Williams.
NASA Administrator Janet Petro hailed the achievement, noting the significance of US space leadership. Simultaneously, the mission has been politically charged, with accusations from Donald Trump and Elon Musk accusing the previous administration of keeping the astronauts from coming home.
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