by SpaceX launched a two-person crew to the International Space Station, the start of a mission to bring home two NASA astronauts who were stuck in orbit after crashing on Boeing Co.’s Starliner spacecraft. had flown.
NASA astronaut Nick Haag and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov took off in a SpaceX Crew Dragon from Cape Canaveral, Florida, just after 1 p.m. on Saturday. The Crew-9 capsule docked with the ISS around 5:30 PM Eastern Time on Sunday, with The Hague and Gorbunov entering the ISS about 90 minutes later.
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The pair had two empty seats next to them that NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams will fill when the spacecraft returns next year.
The Crew-9 flight was supposed to have a crew of four, but NASA removed two crew members to make room for the Starliner duo after technical glitches with Boeing’s spacecraft. Astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson gave up their seats so their colleagues could return to Earth.
“We’re going to find places where they can fly,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said of Cardman and Wilson during a news conference on Friday. “We really appreciate how difficult it is to give up on a mission and wait a little longer.”
Wilmore and Williams have been on the ISS since June 6, when they arrived on Starliner. During docking, the spacecraft experienced a number of helium leaks and failures in its thrusters – small engines the vehicle uses to maneuver through space. After months of analysis and testing, NASA decided it was too risky to take them home on the Boeing capsule.
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The agency and Boeing instead returned the spacecraft unmanned on September 6, after which the spacecraft landed under parachutes in New Mexico.
“When Starliner landed safely, it was great that it came back,” Wilmore said during a Sept. 13 news conference from the space station.
SpaceX’s crewed flights for NASA last about six months, and this vehicle is expected to return around February. Wilmore and Williams’ Starliner flight was expected to last about a week.
“We always miss our families. I miss my two dogs; I miss my friends,” Williams said earlier this month. “There are so many people on earth who send us messages, and it makes you feel immediately at home with everyone.”
