Elon Musk’s SpaceX capsule Crew-9 reached the International Space Station (ISS) with a mission to bring the stuck National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth.
According to Time, the couple carrying a two-person crew, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, docked with the space station on Sunday, September 29, 2024, at roughly 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and the astronauts entered the ISS about 90 minutes later.
NASA astronauts on the ISS warmly welcomed and hugged Hague and Gorbunov at the station in Williams and Wilmore’s ride home.
Hague, after reaching space, said, “Coming through the hatch and seeing all the smiles, and as much as I’ve laughed and cried in the last 10 minutes, I know it’s going to be an amazing expedition.”
Moreover, Hague and Gorbunov will remain in the space for the next five months and will return back with Williams and Willmore next year in February. The spacecraft has two vacant seats for the two stranded astronauts.
For unversed, Williams and Wilmore went into space in the first Starliner test flight with a crew in June 2024 for eight days, but the thruster failures and helium leaks in their Boeing Starliner capsule forced them to stay in space longer than expected.
The troubled Boeing Starliner spacecraft returned to Earth empty earlier in September after NASA decided that the flight would be too risky for the astronauts.
