The two astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station since June they welcomed the capsule of SpaceX in which they will travel back to Earth.
SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a reduced crew of two astronauts and two empty seats reserved for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williamswho will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in the dark as both spacecraft orbited 426 kilometers (265 miles) above Botswana.
The POT opted to have Wilmore and Williams return to Earth aboard SpaceX amid concerns about the safety of its Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first manned Starliner flight, and The space agency decided that the thruster failures and helium leaks that occurred after takeoff were too serious and their cause was not sufficiently understood to put the pilots at risk.. So Starliner came back empty a few weeks ago.
The Dragon carrying Nick Hague of NASA and Alexander Gorbunov of the Russian Space Agency will remain on the space station until February, becoming what was supposed to be a week-long trip for Wilmore and Williams on a more than eight-month mission.
Two NASA astronauts were removed from the mission to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return trip.
NASA typically replaces its station crew approximately every six months. SpaceX has provided the shuttle service since the company’s first crewed flight in 2020. NASA also contracted with Boeing for shuttle flights following the retirement of the space shuttles, but faulty software and other problems with the Starliner caused years of delays and repairs costing more than a billion dollars.
The Starliner is already being inspected at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and post-flight data reviews are scheduled to begin this week.
“We’re a long way from saying, ‘Hey, let’s write off Boeing,’” stated Jim Free, associate administrator of NASA, in a pre-launch briefing.
The arrival of two new astronauts means that the four who have been there since March will be able to return to Earth in their own SpaceX capsule in just over a week. Their stay was extended by a month due to problems with Starliner.
Although Saturday’s liftoff went off without a hitch, SpaceX reported that the rocket’s discarded upper stage ended up outside the planned impact zone in the Pacific due to an engine misfire. The company has suspended all Falcon launches until it figures out what went wrong.