With stuck Boeing Starliner astronauts waiting, SpaceX Crew-10 arrives to Kennedy Space Center
by Richard Tribou
The return to Earth of Boeing's Starliner astronauts stuck on the International Space Station inched closer as their replacements arrived to Florida for their relief flight this week.
The quartet assigned to the SpaceX Crew-10 mission arrived at KSC having flown into the former space shuttle landing facility on Thursday afternoon. They are slated to climb aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance and launch from KSC's Launch Pad 39-A atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 as early as 7:48 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.
NASA astronauts take up two of the four seats with commander Anne McClain and pilot Nichole Ayers. They're joined by mission specialists Takuya Onishi with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
Their arrival at the ISS will mean the Crew-9 members will be able to fly home. That includes NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew up to the space station on Boeing Starliner's Crew Flight Test mission last June, but were left behind on the ISS when NASA opted to send Starliner home uncrewed for safety reasons.
NASA then opted to line up their ride home as part of Crew-9, which flew up in the Crew Dragon Freedom last September with only two members—NASA commander Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, leaving room for Williams and Wilmore for the trip back.
While Hague and Gorbunov will have spent less than six months on board, Williams and Wilmore, who were originally expected as short as an eight-day stay, have already been in space for more than nine months.
McClain was the lone astronaut to speak upon landing. She said her crew has been in constant contact with Crew-9.
"We're ready to high five them, bring them home in the coming weeks," she said.
