Washington:
The SpaceX crew will return two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station docked at the orbiting laboratory, a livestream of the mission revealed on Sunday.
The Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:17 PM (1717 GMT) on Saturday, while the Crew-9 mission on a Dragon spacecraft contacted the ISS at 5:30 PM on Sunday.
After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Haag and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov boarded the space station just after 7 p.m., hugging their floating colleagues on the space station.
“What a fantastic day today was,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said at a news conference.
When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back two space veterans — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — whose stay on the ISS was extended for months due to problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.
The newly developed Starliner made its first crewed flight when it delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June.
Welcome, #Crew9! After floating through the dragon hatch, our newcomers join the crew aboard the @Space_Station. They will conduct for five months @ISS_Research and maintenance of the pioneering laboratory. pic.twitter.com/DJX7f9vxlg
— NASA (@NASA) September 29, 2024
They were only supposed to stay there for an eight-day stay, but after problems with the Starliner's propulsion system emerged during the flight, NASA was forced to weigh a radical change in plans.
After weeks of intensive testing on the Starliner's reliability, the space agency finally decided to return it to Earth without a crew and return the two stranded astronauts home on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission.
SpaceX, the private company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, conducts regular missions every six months to accommodate the rotation of ISS crews.
But the Crew-9 launch was postponed from mid-August to the end of September to give NASA experts more time to evaluate the Starliner's reliability and decide how to proceed.
Then it was delayed a few more days by the devastating passage of Hurricane Helene, a powerful storm that barreled into the other side of Florida on Thursday.
In total, The Hague and Gorbunov will spend about five months on the ISS; and Wilmore and Williams, eight months.
In total, Crew-9 will conduct approximately 200 scientific experiments.
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