The SpaceX crew, which will ferry two astronauts trapped on the International Space Station in February 2025, landed with the orbiting laboratory on Sunday, according to a mission livestream.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:17 p.m. (1717 GMT) on Saturday, and the Crew-9 mission onboard a Dragon spacecraft made contact with the ISS at 5:30 p.m. Sunday.
After docking, astronaut Nick Hague of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov joined the station shortly after 7 p.m., embracing their floating colleagues.
“I just want to say welcome to our new compadres from Dragon Freedom,” said station commander Suni Williams, one of the two stranded astronauts.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:17 p.m. (1717 GMT) on Saturday, and the Crew-9 mission onboard a Dragon spacecraft made contact with the ISS at 5:30 p.m. Sunday.
After docking, astronaut Nick Hague of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov joined the station shortly after 7 p.m., embracing their floating colleagues.
She said:
“I just want to say welcome to our new compadres from Dragon Freedom,” said station commander Suni Williams, one of the two stranded astronauts.
“Alex, welcome to the International Space Station, and Nick, welcome back home.”
When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back space veterans Williams and Butch Wilmore, whose time on the ISS was extended by months due to issues with their Boeing-designed Starliner aircraft.
In June 2024, the newly improved Starliner made its maiden crewed voyage to the International Space Station, delivering Wilmore and Williams.
They were only intended to be there for eight days, but when issues with the Starliner’s propulsion system arose during the voyage, NASA was compelled to consider a drastic change in plans.
After weeks of intense tests on the durability of the Starliner, the space agency eventually chose to return it to Earth without its crew and bring the two stranded astronauts back home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
SpaceX, the private firm created by billionaire Elon Musk, has been flying missions every six months to facilitate crew rotation on the International Space Station.
However, the launch of Crew-9 was pushed back from mid-August to late September to give NASA scientists more time to assess the Starliner’s reliability and decide how to proceed.
The catastrophic passage of Hurricane Helene, a severe hurricane that crashed into the opposite side of Florida on Thursday, pushed it back a few days.
Hague and Gorbunov will spend around five months aboard the ISS. Wilmore and Williams will spend eight months there.
Crew-9 will undertake over 200 scientific experiments during their stay.
AFP