Crew 9 astronauts arrive at the space station after SpaceX reports a rocket anomaly

 

 

After their week-long trip turned into a months-long stay on the International Space Station, two Boeing Starliner astronauts are now within earshot of the spacecraft that will eventually bring them home.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, chosen by NASA to bring astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth after their Starliner spacecraft was deemed too risky for the crew, has arrived at the space station. The vehicle, on a mission called Crew-9, docked with the ISS around 5:30 pm ET on Sunday.

On board the SpaceX vehicle were NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov. Next to them were two empty seats, reserved for Williams and Wilmore to fill when the group returns to Earth next year.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station on Sunday.

The capsule’s hatch opened around 7:04 pm ET, allowing Hague and Gorbunov to enter the space station.

Shortly thereafter, a welcoming ceremony took place with Hague, Gorbunov, Williams, Wilmore and the seven other crew members currently aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Hague and Gorbunov blasted off aboard Crew Dragon Saturday afternoon from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida.

Although they reached their intended orbit without a hitch, SpaceX later revealed that the second stage, or upper portion, of the Falcon 9 rocket that powered the first part of their journey encountered a problem after detaching from the capsule.

“Following today’s successful Crew-9 launch, the Falcon 9 second stage was disposed of in the ocean as planned, but suffered an off-nominal deorbit burn,” the company shared in a post on , the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “As a result, the second stage landed safely in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.”

SpaceX indicated it would suspend flights using Falcon 9 – the world’s most frequently launched rocket – while it explored the anomaly. “We will resume the launch after we better understand the root cause,” the company said in post X.

CNN has reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration for comment.

Months in space

Together, Hague, Williams, Wilmore and Gorbunov will complete SpaceX’s Crew-9 team. The group will spend about five months aboard the space station before returning home no earlier than February.

Williams and Wilmore first traveled to the International Space Station in early June aboard a Boeing Starliner spacecraft for what was supposed to be a week-long test mission.

But problems with helium leaks and thruster malfunctions forced engineers to try to figure out what went wrong — and NASA ultimately decided that the Starliner’s problems weren’t understood well enough for the space agency to allow Williams and Wilmore to come back on board.

The Starliner instead returned home empty on September 6.

After deciding not to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth on the Starliner, NASA instead decided to rearrange SpaceX’s flight plans, kicking out two more astronauts: spaceflight veteran Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman, who was poised to make the his first trip into space. -9 mission to make room for the Starliner team.

But that meant Williams and Wilmore would have to fulfill the duties of Crew-9’s original staff, performing months of routine work on the space station before the return trip. Space agency officials said spacecraft availability and the needs of the ISS played a role in the decision to keep Williams and Wilmore in space for a full crew rotation rather than returning them to Earth first.

“We’ve talked a lot about what to do in terms of when to bring them back,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said in a news conference Friday. “When we look at the vehicles we have ready – and the flights – it made a lot of sense to rotate them back down with Crew-9 and have the two seats empty. Obviously the Crew-8 vehicle was not the right time to bring them back down.”

He added that NASA’s next mission to the space station will involve a new capsule.

“We could schedule it a little sooner, but we should have another vehicle ready. So when we’ve been working with SpaceX, the next Crew-10 vehicle that’s going to be available in the February timeframe, we’re trying to get a brand new Dragon ready,” Stich said. “We’d love to fly that Dragon and space out the flights across the Dragons. And so really that’s the reason we’re keeping Butch and Suni there a little longer.”

Both Williams and Wilmore – veterans of previous missions to the space station – said they have adapted easily to the idea of ​​remaining in space until next year, with Williams stressing that the microgravity environment is his “happy place.”

Rounding out the staff currently aboard the International Space Station are Don Pettit and Aleksey Ovchinin of NASA and Ivan Vagner of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The three arrived at the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle on September 11.

Pettit and Gorbunov traveled aboard a spacecraft developed outside their home countries as part of a seat-swapping agreement between NASA and its Russian counterpart. [CNN]

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