NASA’s beleaguered mission to rescue two stranded astronauts has finally launched, setting the stage for a happy ending to the nine-month-long saga.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully took off Friday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, on a mission to deliver four new astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
The new team is scheduled to arrive at the station on Saturday. Once there, astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will finally be able to return to Earth at some point on or shortly after March 19.
The pair have been stranded in orbit since June 5, with SpaceX owner Elon Musk and many others claiming Williams and Wilmore were left on the ISS for political reasons.
The duo were initially scheduled for an eight day mission.
Musk said he offered to bring the astronauts home eight months ago, but the Biden Administration shot it down because it would’ve made Donald Trump ‘look good’ in the presidential race against former vice president Kamala Harris.
The successful takeoff comes after the Crew-10 mission was scrubbed on the launch pad due to mechanical issues just minutes before launch on Wednesday.
Crew-10 includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov.
Alongside Williams and Wilmore, NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov will be returning home on board SpaceX’s Crew-9 Dragon capsule that is already docked at the ISS.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission will replace Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore, and two other astronauts aboard the International Space Station with four new crewmembers
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were original scheduled for an eight-day mission, but were forced to stay after technical issues plagued the Boeing’s Starliner that brought them to the ISS
The launch was initially scrubbed on Wednesday due to a hydraulic system issue with the SpaceX rocket carrying the new astronauts to space
Last year’s presidential race seems to be at the heart of why the astronauts have been stuck in space so long.
Musk backed Trump during the 2024 presidential race, donating $288 million to his campaign and appearing at several MAGA rallies
During a recent press briefing, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, admitted that there ‘may have been conversations’ in the Biden White House about delaying the return for political optics of having Trump’s most famous donor save the day, but he was not part of the discussions.
Wednesday’s Crew-10 launch was called off due to a hydraulic system issue with the Falcon 9 rocket. NASA said teams were working to address the problem.
NASA had moved up the return mission by two weeks after after President Trump told Musk to ‘go get’ Williams and Wilmore.
Before the president’s request, the astronauts were not coming back earlier than March 26.
‘It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,’ Williams said of her family.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 crew members Cosmonaut Mission Specialist Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos of Russia, Pilot Nichole Ayers and Commander Anne McClain of U.S., and Mission Specialist Takuya Onishi of Japan’s JAXA
‘We’re here, we have a mission – we’re just doing what we do every day, and every day is interesting because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun.’
When the new crew arrives aboard the station, Wilmore, Williams, Nick Hague, and Aleksandr Gorbunov can return to Earth in the capsule that has been attached to the station since September.
Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS as the first test crew of Boeing’s Starliner, which suffered propulsion system issues in space.
NASA deemed it too risky for the astronauts to fly home on the Boeing craft. This led to the current plan to bring them home in a SpaceX capsule that arrived in September.
The space agency gave Boeing $4.5 billion contract to develop Starliner in a bid to compete with Musk’s SpaceX.
Bowersox said that SpaceX ‘helped with a lot of options’ for bringing Williams and Wilmore back earlier, but the final decision came down to costs.
He explained that they discussed adding a mission or bringing the currently docked capsule home early, ‘but we ruled them out pretty quickly just based on how much money we’ve got in our budget.’
NASA’s budget for the fiscal year 2024 comes in at just under $30 billion.
President Donald Trump helps ÿ A-Xii, the son of White House Senior Advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, up the stairs of Marine One on the South Lawn
White House Senior Advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller walk towards Marine One on the South Lawn to join U.S. President Donald Trump
It comes after a report found the agency spent millions on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) grants and contracts while Williams and Wilmore have been stuck in space.
Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president for SpaceX, also said that NASA’s delayed plan allowed the agency ‘to use Sunny and Butch in a very productive manner’ and ‘keep the science going.’
Returning the astronauts early would’ve meant fewer bodies on the International Space Station (ISS) to continue research.
