The replacement team of the international space station was launched on Friday evening, paving the way on the return from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two NASA astronauts stuck on the space station for nine months.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off at 7:03 p.m. from Kennedy Space Center from NASA in Florida with crew members-10: Anne McClain of NASA and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi from Japan and Kirill Peskov of Russia. The crew is part of a six -month routine rotation.
The crew-10 and the dragon spacecraft should reach the space station around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday.
The return to Earth alongside Wilmore and Williams will be the astronaut of Nasa Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Their return is scheduled for Wednesday, to allow overlapping of the two crews to inform the new team.
Wilmore and Williams arrived on the international space station in June 2024 and should stay in space for about 10 days. But their return was delayed after the mechanical problems with their spacecraft, which, after weeks of troubleshooting, was then returned to Earth without them. Their return was continuously pushed due to other technical delays.
