Less than an hour before it was due to blast off, NASA stood down the launch of four “Crew-10” astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket to rescue two astronauts who have been living in space for months.
The next available window is 7:26pm EDT on Thursday.
The astronauts’ arrival at the orbiting laboratory is designed clear the way for Crew-9 to return to Earth, including NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams. The pair have been on board since last June.
Lift-off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon spacecraft had been slated for 7:48 p.m. EDT from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. A NASA stream of the event had been set up. The crew had been expected to dock at the space station by approximately 6 a.m. on Thursday.
The international group on Crew-10 includes NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos’ Kirill Peskov.
Crew-10 is the tenth crew rotation mission of SpaceX’s human space transportation system and its 11th flight with astronauts.
The space agency said that when the Dragon capsule eventually docks at the station, Crew-9 will familiarize their fellow astronauts with the station’s ongoing science and maintenance work.
“The crew will spend several months aboard the orbiting laboratory conducting spacewalks, research demonstrations and experiments for the benefit of humanity and deep space exploration,” NASA explained.
After a brief handover, and pending good weather, NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Williams, Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will head back home. Gorbunov and Hague came to the space station on a mission after Williams and Wilmore arrived.
“I’m looking forward to seeing my classmate, Expedition 59 crewmate, spacewalking partner, and friend [Anne McClain] float through the hatch. Go Crew-10!” wrote Hague before the launch was stood down.
Williams and Wilmore have spent an extra, and initially unexpected, nine months in zero gravity following issues after their Boeing Crew Flight Test: the first crewed mission of the capsule. The capsule returned to Earth without them last September in an unexpected uncrewed return after technical difficulties. That left Williams and Wilmore in space for longer than intended.
While the astronauts have refuted continuous narratives that have been “stuck” on the space station, President Donald Trump has repeatedly placed blame on the Biden administration for “[allowing it] to happen.”
“We love you, and we’re coming up to get you, and you shouldn’t have been up there so long,” Trump said earlier this month.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who now has an advisory role in the Trump administration, also previously claimed on social media that his aerospace company could have brought the duo back months earlier. Trump has pleaded with Musk to rescue the astronauts.
“What was offered, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how that process went — that’s information that we simply don’t have,” Wilmore said in a recent briefing to reporters.
He and Williams have made the best of their situation.
“Of course, you know, we came up here thinking we’d be only here for a little while and do our test flight, but then the added time here has allowed us to do all the science experiments,” Williams told AccuWeather. “We’ve gone through a lot of holidays together. We’ve learned how to make cakes up here for each other. So it’s been a lot of fun actually.”
