At last, they’re off. The three astronauts and one cosmonaut of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission are on their way to the International Space Station. Liftoff went smoothly, at 7:03 p.m. ET on Friday, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted the Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, to space.
Why was the SpaceX Crew-10 launch delayed?
NASA had planned the spacecraft’s liftoff for 7:48 p.m. ET Wednesday from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch complex has a storied history, dating back to the Apollo moon program era of the 1960s.
However, a hydraulic system issue meant NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov had to exit the Dragon spacecraft. Plans to try again Thursday were scrapped because of the weather forecast, and moved to Friday.
NASA’s ‘Stranded’ Astronauts Days Away From Coming Home
Watching Friday’s launch
NASA livestreamed the launch at 7:03 p.m. ET Friday, March 14, from Launch Complex 39A.
Crew-10 docks to ISS: How to watch
Arrival coverage starts at 9:45 p.m. on Saturday. Free streaming service NASA Plus will broadcast the docking, hatch opening and welcome ceremony events. If all goes smoothly, Endurance will dock with the ISS at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, with hatch opening scheduled for 1:05 a.m. on Sunday.
Return of ‘stranded’ astronauts
Crew-10 has a bit more riding on it than a typical crew rotation mission. NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore became long-term ISS residents after riding to the station on a test mission for Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule. The crew capsule encountered technical issues and was sent back to Earth without the astronauts.
Williams and Wilmore’s ISS stay unexpectedly stretched out for more than eight months. Crew-10’s arrival means Willams, Wilmore, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will be able to hand off ISS duties to the newcomers and return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon sent up in September. That Dragon arrived with two open seats for the Starliner crew’s journey home.
With the Friday launch successful, the Crew-9 members, including the much-delayed Williams and Wilmore, will depart the space station no earlier than Wednesday, March 19, depending on the weather at the splashdown locations off the coast of Florida.
Both Williams and Wilmore have insisted they don’t feel stranded, though that term has been widely applied to them in news stories and social media.
Watch this: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 Launch: Mission to Return ‘Stranded’ Astronauts Begins
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