Astronaut crew docks with space station to replace ‘Butch and Suni’
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Nasa astronauts Sunita Williams, Nick Hague, Barry Wilmore and Donald Pettit aboard the International Space Station.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON – A SpaceX capsule delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) early on March 16 in a Nasa crew-swop mission that will allow a pair of stuck astronauts, Captain Butch Wilmore and Captain Suni Williams, to return home after nine months on the orbiting lab.
About 29 hours after launching at 7.03pm ET on March 15
They were welcomed by the station’s seven-member crew, which includes Capt Wilmore and Capt Williams – veteran Nasa astronauts and retired Navy test pilots who have remained on the station after problems with Boeing’s Starliner capsule forced Nasa to bring it back empty.
Otherwise a routine crew rotation flight, the Crew-10 mission is a long-awaited first step to bring Capt Wilmore and Capt Williams back to Earth – part of a plan set by Nasa in 2024 that has been given greater urgency by President Donald Trump since he took office in January.
Capt Wilmore and Capt Williams are scheduled to depart the ISS on March 19 as early as 4am ET, along with Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Colonel Hague and Lieutenant Gorbunov flew to the ISS in September on a Crew Dragon craft with two empty seats for Capt Wilmore and Capt Williams, and that craft has been attached to the station since.
The Crew-10 crew, scheduled to stay on the station for roughly six months, includes Nasa astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
The crew-swop mission became entangled in politics
They claimed, without evidence, that Mr Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, abandoned Capt Wilmore and Capt Williams on the station for political reasons.
Having seen their mission turn into a normal Nasa rotation to the ISS, Capt Wilmore and Capt Williams have been doing scientific research and conducting routine maintenance with the other five astronauts.
Capt Williams told reporters in March that she was looking forward to returning home to see her two dogs and family.
“It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” she said. REUTERS
