Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Saturday, September 29, 2024, launched a Crew-9 mission to bring back NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.
According to New York Post, the rescue mission, Crew-9, was launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 1:17 p.m. The five-month mission will bring Williams and Wilmore back on Earth next year, who have been stuck in space since June 2024 after problems occurred in the Boeing spacecraft.
NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov began their 5-month journey to the International Space Station for scientific research in the SpaceX spacecraft, and at the end of the mission, they will bring the stranded astronauts back to Earth in February 2025.
The spacecraft has two vacant seats reserved for William and Wilmore as NASA’s astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson pulled out of the mission to bring the stuck astronauts home.
However, Cardman and Wilson are promised a future space mission.
Teary-eyed Cardman, who took part in the launch live stream from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, said, “Every crewed launch that I have ever watched has really brought me a lot of emotion. This one today was especially unique. It was hard not to watch that rocket lift off without thinking, ‘That’s my rocket, and that’s my crew.’”
To note, Boeing's Starliner capsule returned empty on Earth earlier in September after the space station decided that it was too risky to bring astronauts into the troubled spacecraft.
