SpaceX launch sets up long-delayed trip home for Boeing Starliner astronauts
Wednesday's 7:48 p.m. departure of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with a Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft marks the final portion of a long odyssey for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who docked at the space station last June for a planned eight-day stay, and have been there ever since. They could be home as early as Sunday, but NASA won't announce target times until Crew-10 arrives to the station.
The pair were stranded by safety concerns with the Starliner, which returned to Earth without crew. Then their extended stay became a focus for President Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, leading to accelerated timing for the Crew-10 mission.
Space Launch Delta 45's weather squadron forecast a better than 95% chance for good conditions at the launch site Wednesday. The first-stage booster is scheduled for a recovery landing at Cape Canaveral — meaning parts of Central Florida could be in store for sonic booms.
Heading to the space station are a pair of NASA astronauts, commander Anne McClain and pilot Nichole Ayers, as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
They're set to arrive less than a day later to the space station where they will have a two-day handoff with the people they're replacing.
That includes the duo that flew up last summer on Boeing Starliner's Crew Flight Test, Wilmore and Williams. The pair arrived June 6, 2024, one day after launching from Cape Canaveral on the first human spaceflight of Boeing's spacecraft.
'Honestly, I'm kind of most looking forward to breaking bread with those guys, talking to them, giving them big hugs,' McClain said.
Starliner suffered thruster failures and helium leaks on the way that ultimately led to NASA's decision to send it home without Williams and Wilmore.
Instead, they joined the space station crew and were reassigned to fly home with the SpaceX Crew-9 mission. That crew flew up in the Crew Dragon Freedom with two, instead of the normal four astronauts, in September to make room on the ride home for Wilmore and Williams.
Now they will join Crew-9 commander and NASA astronaut Nick Hague along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov with a departure as early as Sunday headed for a splashdown off the Florida coast.
During a pre-departure press conference last week, Williams said the most difficult part of their stay has probably been how their families have had to deal with it.
'It's been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us, you know? We're here. We have a mission. We're just doing what we do every day,' she said. 'Every day is interesting because we're up in space and it's a lot of fun. So I think the hardest part is, you know, having the folks on the ground have to not know exactly when we're coming back.'
The decision to switch capsules and move up the pair's return came shortly after SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced President Trump had tasked him with bringing them home 'as soon as possible.'
NASA officials said discussion about the switch, though, was already in play at least a month before the Musk and Trump statements.
'But the president's interests sure added energy to the conversation,' said NASA's Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorate. 'It's great to have a president who's interested in what we're doing.'
Musk later claimed SpaceX offered to fly up a specific rescue mission, but that was turned down by the Biden administration for political reasons. Bowersox, though, said NASA managers made their recommendation based on the mission needs and capability of Williams and Wilmore.
'We thought the plan that we came up with made a lot of sense, and that, especially for Butch and Suni, we know they're experienced astronauts,' Bowersox said. 'They're great in space. We knew they'd be great additions to the crew and we knew that for most astronauts, spending extra time on orbit is really a gift, and we thought they'd probably enjoy their time there, so we thought it was a good way to go and for a lot of reasons.'
Steve Stich, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager, added that a lot of technical requirements were in play such as having the correct size spacesuits and seats for the pair.
'The best option was really the one that we're embarking upon now,' Stich said. 'It really was driven by that in conjunction with Butch and Suni being very experienced crew members.'
Wilmore and Williams will have spent 9½ months in space along with the unique experience of having flown on four spacecraft: Starliner and Crew Dragon as well as Russian Soyuz and space shuttle missions.
'We helped put it together. We've been up here seeing it change throughout all these years, do a lot of science up here.' Williams said. 'I think just the fact that we're living up here in this very unique place gives you an amazing perspective, not only, you know, out the window, obviously, but also just on how to solve problems.
'I don't want to lose that spark of inspiration and that perspective when I leave, so I'm going to have to bottle it somehow.'
For the Crew-10 quartet, the mission marks the beginning of what is normally about a six-month stay on board with the Crew-11 mission slated to fly in late summer. They will join Expedition 73 on the station, which has had continued human presence since November 2000. It's McClain and Onishi's second spaceflight while Ayers and Peskov are rookies.
Ayers becomes the first of NASA's most-recent class of astronauts, which includes Central Florida native Luke Delaney, to be assigned a spaceflight.
'It's an honor to represent my class and be the first one, but I think that all of us were ready at the same time, and so it could have been any one of us that got picked,' Ayers said. 'There was nothing but love for me when I got announced for this mission, and there has been nothing but love and support from my crewmates and my classmates this entire time training.'
McClain said she has been talking more often with Williams and Wilmore.
'We're about to be housemates here in a few days. Their spirits are high,' she said. 'Of course, they're ready to come home, and of course we're ready to launch. But the most important thing is that we do both of those things safely.'
She insisted they have the same mentality as she does when it comes to the importance of NASA's mission at the station, calling it significant to scientific development and a proving ground for deep-space exploration.
'All of us take very serious our responsibility to be stewards of the International Space Station,' she said. 'We simply cannot leave it uncrewed or undercrewed for any period of time.
'That is first and foremost on all of our minds when we go is that level of responsibility. And it's certainly foremost on their minds.'
Stumping for the station's importance comes adjacent comments from Musk who recently called for it to be deorbited as early as 2027 stating that it was no longer useful.
SpaceX and Boeing were both originally contracted to provide taxi service for NASA to the space station as part of the Commercial Crew Program, designed to end reliance on Russia and bring launches back to Florida. Delays have plagued Starliner, though, which is now at least five years behind SpaceX.
The launch of Crew-10 marks SpaceX's 16th human spaceflight for its spacecraft since the Demo-2 mission in May 2020. That flight marked the first time U.S. astronauts launched from the U.S. since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.
With the space station slated to end service after 2030, time is running out for NASA to certify Starliner so it can have a chance to fly alongside SpaceX for rotational crew missions.
'We'll continue to work for certification toward the end of this year,' Stich said. 'Whatever we do the Starliner vehicle will be crew capable.'
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