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After their week-long trip turned into a month-long stay on the International Space Station, two Boeing Starliner astronauts are now within reach of the spacecraft that will eventually bring them home.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, chosen by NASA to carry astronauts Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore to Earth after their Starliner spacecraft was deemed too risky for the crew, has arrived at the space station. The vehicle, in a mission called Crew-9, docked at the International Space Station at approximately 5:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov were on board the SpaceX spacecraft. Next to them were two empty seats, saved for Williams and Willmore to occupy when the group returns to Earth next year.
The capsule’s hatch opened at approximately 7:04 PM ET, allowing Haag and Gorbunov to enter the space station. A welcome ceremony with Hague, Gorbunov, Williams, Willmore and the seven other crew members currently aboard the orbiting laboratory was held shortly after.
Hague and Gorbunov lifted off aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft Saturday afternoon from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Although they reached their intended orbit without a hitch, SpaceX later revealed that the second stage, or upper section, of the Falcon 9 rocket that powered the first part of their flight had a problem after it separated from the capsule.
“Following today’s successful launch of Crew-9, the Falcon 9 second stage was jettisoned into the ocean as planned, but experienced an indefinite burnup in orbit,” the company shared in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “As a result, the second stage landed safely in the ocean, but outside the target area.”
SpaceX has indicated that it will temporarily halt flights using the Falcon 9 – the world’s fastest-flying rocket – while it explores the anomaly. “We will resume the launch after we better understand the root cause,” the company said in the X post.
The Federal Aviation Administration told CNN it is looking into the matter.
“The Federal Aviation Administration is aware that an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX NASA Crew-9 mission that lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on September 28,” the agency said Monday after the successful docking of Crew-9. “The accident involved a Falcon 9 second stage landing outside the designated danger zone. No general injuries or damage to public property were reported. The FAA is calling for an investigation.”
Together, Hague, Williams, Willmore and Gorbunov will complete SpaceX’s Crew-9 team. The group will spend about five months aboard the space station before returning home no later than February.
Williams and Willmore first traveled to the International Space Station in early June aboard a Boeing Starliner spacecraft in what was expected to be a week-long test mission.
But problems with helium leaks and faulty thrusters left engineers scrambling to figure out what went wrong — and NASA ultimately decided that the Starliner’s problems weren’t well understood enough for the space agency to allow Williams and Willmore back on board.
Instead, the Starliner flew home empty on September 6.
After deciding not to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth aboard the Starliner ship, NASA instead chose to rearrange SpaceX’s flight plans, kicking out two more astronauts — spaceflight veteran Stephanie Wilson and Zina Cardman, who was about to make her maiden flight to Earth. Space – from the crew. -9 Mission to make room for the Starliner team.
But this means that Williams and Willmore will have to fulfill the duties of the original Crew-9 crew, as they will take months of routine work on the space station before the return trip. Space agency officials said spacecraft availability and the needs of the International Space Station played a role in the decision to keep Williams and Willmore in space for a full crew rotation rather than returning them to Earth sooner.
“We talked a lot about what to do in terms of when they could be cycled again,” Steve Stich, director of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a news conference on Friday. “When we look at the vehicles we had fitted out – and the flights – it made a lot of sense to cycle them back with Crew-9 and get the two empty seats. Crew-8 was clearly not the right time to bring them back to Earth.
He added that NASA’s next mission to the space station will include a new capsule.
“We can schedule it in a little shorter time, but we have to have another vehicle ready. When we worked with SpaceX, the next vehicle for Crew-10 would be in the February time frame, which is a brand new Dragon vehicle that we’re trying to get ready for,” Stitch said. “We would like to fly this dragon and separate flights via the dragon. Which is the real reason why Butch and Sonny are kept there a little longer.
Both Williams and Willmore – veterans of previous missions to the International Space Station – said they have easily adjusted to the idea of staying in space until next year, with Williams noting that the microgravity environment is her “happy place.”
The crew currently aboard the International Space Station includes Don Pettit, Alexei Ovchinin of NASA, and Ivan Vagner of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The three arrived at the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on September 11.
Pettit and Gorbunov rode aboard a spacecraft developed outside their home countries as part of a seat-swap agreement between NASA and its Russian counterpart.
