SpaceX has launched a crew of astronauts who will take over duties on the International Space Station from NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — allowing the duo to return home from the orbiting laboratory after a days-long journey turned into a nine-month, politically charged trip.
The Crew-10 mission, part of a routine staff rotation jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX, took off at 7:03 p.m. ET Friday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule, riding atop one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets, carried the four Crew-10 astronauts — NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — to orbit.
The four crew members are expected to dock with the space station around 11:30 p.m. ET Saturday. They will spend a few days undergoing a “handover” period with Williams, Wilmore, and their fellow Crew-9 astronauts, NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov. (CNN)