Starliner astronauts' replacement crew arrive at International Space Station
The Crew 10 Dragon capsule caught up with the International Space Station and moved in for a textbook docking early Sunday, bringing four fresh crew members to the lab and clearing the way for the Starliner astronauts to return to Earth after nearly 300 days in space.
Approaching from behind and below, the Crew Dragon, launched Friday evening from the Kennedy Space Center, passed 1,300 feet directly under the station before looping up to a point 720 feet directly ahead of the outpost. From there, it glided straight in for docking at the Harmony module's forward port at 12:04 a.m. EDT.
Motorized latches then engaged to pull the capsule into the docking mechanism for an airtight structural seal. After standard leak checks and umbilical connections, the crew opened the Dragon's forward hatch at 1:35 a.m. and floated into the space station.
Crew 10 commander Anne McClain, an Army colonel and former combat helicopter pilot, told flight controllers she and her fellow fliers had a "great trip" from the launch pad to the space station, adding "I cannot tell you the immense joy of our crew when we looked out the window and we saw the space station for the first time."
"Let me tell you, that is such an amazing journey, you can hardly even put it into words," she said. "The ride up on the Falcon 9, orbiting the Earth for the last couple of days, it's been absolutely incredible ... Thank you very, very much."
"Thank you to SpaceX for the awesome ride up here," said co-pilot Nichole Ayers, an Air Force major and F-22 Raptor pilot. "As a (space) rookie, that was one of the coolest things I've ever done. I can't wait to get to work up here."
McClain, Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov -- both veteran commercial airline pilots — are replacing Crew 9 commander Nick Hague, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, Starliner commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and his pilot, Sunita Williams.
Three other crew members, cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, were launched to the station last September aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. They're scheduled to return to Earth next month.
Wilmore and Williams were launched last June 5 on the first piloted test flight of Boeing's Starliner astronaut ferry ship. The flight was originally expected to last about eight days.
But during rendezvous with the space station, the Starliner experienced propulsion system problems and NASA eventually ruled out bringing the crew down on the Boeing spacecraft.
Instead, the astronauts were told to remain aboard the station while the Starliner returned to Earth on its own. NASA then bumped two astronauts from the next station flight — Crew 9 — freeing up two seats for use by Wilmore and Williams.
When Hague and Gorbunov reached the station, Wilmore and Williams joined them to become part of Crew 9 for a normal six-month tour of duty.
Now that Crew 10 has arrived, Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams will help familiarize their replacements with space station operations before undocking and returning to Earth next week with a splashdown in the Gulf near the coast of Florida.
At landing, Wilmore and Williams will have logged nearly 290 days in space since launch last June. While a long flight by any standard, it's still well short of the U.S. record for a single flight — 371 days — set by astronaut Frank Rubio in 2022-23.
Ironically, Rubio's record was the result of another extended mission, this one the result of a major coolant leak in the Russian Soyuz he launched aboard. The Russians decided not to bring the crew down aboard their original spacecraft and instead launched a replacement.
Rubio ended up spending a little more than a full year in space, twice as long as he originally expected.
Given Williams' two previous stays aboard the space station, she will move up to No. 2 on the list of most experienced U.S. astronauts with around 570 days in space overall, depending on the actual launch date. Only former astronaut Peggy Whitson has more time aloft among U.S. astronauts: 675 days over four flights.
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